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avengerscompound · 3 days

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The Interview - Chapter 20

The Interview - A Captain America Fanfic

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Rating: E

Warnings: None

Pairing: Steve Rogers x OFC Melody Danes

Word Count: 1933

Summary: Melody Danes gets the break of a lifetime when as a lowly intern, she’s assigned to write a profile piece on Captain America. Steve Rogers is a hard man not to fall for and as she and Melody get closer and Melody’s career takes off, jealousy leads to sabotage, and the potential to bring her whole world crashing down.

Chapter 20

The two-block walk from where Melody had met Steve for lunch was a nightmare. Most of the press stopped following after a couple of blocks but as the Daily Bugle paparazzi were going to the same place as she was, they stuck with them the whole time. Steve tried to shield her body from the cameras to try and make it so that none of the photos would be worth very much money, and to reduce the risk of people recognizing her. Melody knew that it was too late to protect her identity. People had already been speculating, and besides, the person taking their photo as she reached the Daily Bugle was named Phil Sheldon. If she knew him, he knew her.

They reached the entrance to the building. Melody wanted so badly to bury her face in Steve’s chest and hide there, but she wasn’t willing to even risk a kiss goodbye with Phil still taking photos of them. She turned and looked up at Steve. “Can you just fuck off, Phil?” she said.

“Just doing my job, Mel,” he said. “You know how it is?”

“Yeah, well, don’t forget what my job is,” she said.

“Oh yeah, like Jameson will let you do anything that makes the Bugle look like it lacks scruples,” he said.

Steve shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll call you when I get back to work.”

“Okay,” she said, giving him a nod. He gently squeezed her hand before she went inside.

She went straight up to Jameson’s office. She was fuming about the intrusion on her privacy by her workplace. She even considered if it counted as workplace harassment and if she could sue over it.

She knocked on the door to Jameson’s office but didn’t wait for him to call her in. He looked up from his computer but she was ranting before he had a chance to say a single word. “How could you think it was okay to have photographers stalking me on my lunch?” she snapped. “You know this is harassment? I work here! It’s bad enough that you think it’s okay to harass other people, but this is my job! Do you know how absolutely toxic it is for me to have to come in here and work with the people stalking me!? I could sue!”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Jameson said, getting up from his desk. “Let’s not go throwing the ‘s’ word around. You know that this is what we do here. And Captain America’s love life is going to sell papers. Besides, you told us where you were going to be.”

“I absolutely did not!” she argued. “Why the hell would I do that? Why would I betray Steve like that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, throwing his hands up over his head. “You sent it to all the tabloids. I was a little miffed you weren’t giving me the exclusive, to be honest. I assumed you wanted to get yourself a little fame and recognition.”

“Over my relationship?” she groaned. “Jonah? Really?”

“How was I supposed to know?” he said, spinning his computer screen around and opening the email. “Maybe you were having relationship troubles.”

She looked over the screen. The email did have her return address, but it lacked her official DB! signature. Someone had cloned her email address. It was easy enough to do. That didn’t explain how they knew where and when she was having lunch with Steve though. They didn’t have a regular lunch date time, nor did they just go to the same few venues over and over again and she hadn’t written down where and when she was having lunch today.”

She scowled and pulled out her phone. “Tell me the truth, Jonah. Do you have someone spying on me?”

“I may be lacking in scruples, Danes, but I don’t stoop that low,” he said.

“So drop the story then,” she said.

“No, no,” he said. “I can’t do that. And what’s the point anyway? It’ll be all over TMZ in an hour.”

She sighed. He was right. It was out now and there wasn’t a hell of a lot she could do about it, except ride the wave. She didn’t expect Steve’s fans to take it very well, but it was something she had been mentally preparing for for months.

“Fine,” she said. “You can run it, but I expect my workplace to be safe for me, Jonah. I can’t come here just expecting to have to watch my back because you want to report on my boyfriend. He and the other Avengers have been doing me a lot of favors to get your website up and profitable. You could at least show them some respect in return for that generosity.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jameson said, waving his hand. “I’m not going to smother a story just because someone did me a favor. Where’s the ethics in that?”

“Oh so now you’re worried about ethics?” she snarked. “Look, there’s a difference between taking our photo out because you happen to find us and stalking me to where we’re going. I’m just asking that you respect the difference.”

Jameson huffed and sat back down in his chair. “Fine. No stalking. But it wouldn’t hurt you to occasionally mention him in your pieces.” She went to argue with him but he held up his hand. “Nothing big. Just the kind of stuff you already do in your column from time to time. You know what I mean? Talking about a coffee shop you tried with your boyfriend. Or how nice it is to wake up with someone else there. You don’t have to name him. And you don’t have to talk about your sex lives. Just teasers. The people will eat it up. If we get those exclusives, we won’t need the photos of you both together. In fact, anytime someone else takes photos of you both together, it’ll just sell your work more.”

She sighed. It sounded so sordid and dirty. But the truth was, she had been writing about her life in the columns, and Steve had been slipping into those. She didn’t name him, just the same as she never named anyone in those columns. Anyone who knew she was dating Steve could go back and infer it was him she’d been talking about. She also knew Steve knew she did it. He read the columns daily and would talk to her about them. It was natural to write it, and she wasn’t doing it to cash in on her relationship.

Now that it was out she was dating Steve, and Jameson was asking her to write about it, it felt dirty and exploitative. She didn’t want to take advantage of Steve that way. She didn’t want her relationship with him to be picked over by the public.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Well, if that’s it,” Jameson said, waving her toward the door. “We have papers to sell.”

“I don’t work for the paper, Jonah,” she said as she headed out the door.

“Clicks, magazines. Do your job,” he yelled after her.

She headed back to her office, still fairly agitated but no longer fuming. She didn’t know what she was going to do about her column, and she didn’t like how she felt about her job in general. Someone was spying on her and she had to go to work with the same people who were invading her personal space.

The dread she felt about what was going to happen to her social media when those photos came out, only compounded the feelings. She didn’t think they’d have gotten wind of it yet. As quickly as TMZ could move, she still didn’t think the photos would be up yet. But she couldn’t help but pick up her phone to see if anyone had started to tweet her.

The phone rang in her hand and Steve’s photo showed up on her screen. She leaned back in her chair and hit connect, putting her earbuds in. “Hey, you,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Of course, honey,” he said. “I wanted to check in on you. I’ve been dealing with this since World War II. You haven’t, and the only reason you’re dealing with it now, is because of me.”

Melody couldn’t help but laugh at that. “See I was going to say that it was my fault they were there.”

“Oh are we playing that game are we?” Steve teased. “Go on, tell me how you think it’s your fault.”

“I’m serious, Steve!” she squealed.

“I’m sure you are, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “Go on, tell me what you’re thinking, considering I’m the famous one.”

She bit back laughter. It was good to know this whole situation hadn’t upset him, and that he was so worried about her own well-being. “Steve!” she yelped. “Listen okay?”

“I’m listening,” he laughed.

“So I went up to see Jameson when I got back here. I was really pissed that he’d sent photographers out to follow us back to the office. He said I’d sent him an email to tell him and the rest of the press I was going to be there,” she explained.

“Why would you do that?” Steve asked.

“I didn’t do that,” she said. “But he had an email from my address. You can fake return addresses. But I don’t know how anyone would have known where we were even going. It’s not like I wrote it down anywhere and we don’t just go back to the same restaurant all the time. I think someone overheard the phone call. Which makes me feel really safe here at work. And now Jameson wants me to talk about you more in my column. I don’t know what to do, Steve. We just moved into a new apartment. We’re on a lease. I can’t afford to quit my job. And Bobbi works here too! What if they do it to her as well.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Steve said quickly. “If someone is listening in to your conversations, then they can hear you right now.”

“Right. Right,” she said. “Of course, they could be.” This was where they were now. She couldn’t trust her job or anyone around her. She wanted to believe that the staff she’d selected were all trustworthy, but now she couldn’t be sure.

“Can you come here after work?” Steve asked. “I’d like to get Tony to check your phone for bugs.”

“Yeah, of course,” she said. “I’ll come straight over.”

“I’ll get Bucky to invite Bobbi around too,” he said. “We can talk this out. All of it. What you want to do with your job. About how we keep our private lives private. The column. All of it. Okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay. Thank you, Steve.”

“I love you, sweetheart,” Steve said. “This isn’t your fault. Someone is using you to get to me. We just have to work out how to stop them.”

“Okay,” she said, letting out a deep breath. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve this man. “I love you too. I’ll see you tonight.”

She disconnected the call and sat back in her chair, staring at the phone which she was now fairly sure had betrayed her trust. “Traitor,” she mumbled, tossing it onto her desk. Closing her eyes she took a deep breath. It was a lot to deal with but she knew Steve trusted her. For now, that was the main thing. She’d build everything else off that trust and together they’d figure this out.