#Big Army was trying to crack down on alcohol abuse and that was their completely logical plan to tackle the problem

[texanredrose]

One More Story

Because this is still arguably the funniest thing I’ve done in my military career that didn’t involve a risk to any lives or equipment and I will never be able to publish this anywhere officially without Uncle Sam getting all snooty about it.

So... somewhere in the later part of 2013, my brigade pushed down a new order that said, basically, “no hanging out in barracks rooms of the opposite sex”. Now, I thought this was stupid but me and my buddies recognized a loophole; our barracks building housed our company area as well. The offices were in the basement of the building HOWEVER they didn’t constitute “barracks rooms” because they were part of the company area, not the actual barracks area.

So one night, my buddies and I decide to drink in my office. There were four of us- me, sitting at my desk, my drinking buddy/superior/subordinate (it’s... a whole other story to explain that, so just roll with it) sitting at his desk, the Desk Sergeant from the previous story in the chair in front of my desk, and the supply chick at the boss’ chair (the E-6). We’d been out drinking earlier and decided it would be cheaper to kill a few bottles in the office than staying out on the town drinking. Not only are we abiding by the new orders, we’re not anywhere we shouldn’t be; technically, it was my office, but it was the training office and I was the Training NCOIC, so I had every right to be there, along with my drinking buddy. The other two? Eh, we were with them, so it was fine. I mean, the doors had key card locks, and only 3 people had the card to unlock the door to my office: me, my buddy, and the E-6, who didn’t live in the barracks. As long as nothing serious happened that forced the E-6 to come to the office, no one would know!

20 minutes later, no shit, the E-6 walks in because there was a serious incident at our remote location. We all have red solo cups. I have one unopened 12 pk of coke by my desk, and a few half full bottles on it. Wild Turkey, Jim Bean, Jack Daniels; we were working our way through ‘em, as they were full when we started. The E-6 looks at the supply chick.

“Get out of my seat.” She fucking gets up and dips, DS follows her out. The E-6 looks at me and my buddy. “Look, I don’t care, but if [the E-7, the big boss, the ‘I will break you if you think about stepping one toe out of line’ E-7] catches you, I ain’t covering.”

I was halfway out of my chair when the other door to the office opens, the one leading into the E-7′s office. 

Guess who.

The E-7 looks at me and my buddy. “What are you two doing here? Did you hear about the incident?”

I got all the way up, walked in front of the three bottles of alcohol on my desk, and went to parade rest. “Uh, no, Sergeant, we were just-”

“Doesn’t matter; leave, we’ve got work to do.”

“Roger, Sergeant.” Behind my back, I felt for the necks of the bottles, grabbed them between my fingers, and went from parade rest to fast walking out of the office in the blink of an eye. My buddy got the door for me. We left our solo cups where they were.

I come up the stairs and CQ- who knew damn well we were down there- just stood with wide eyes as my buddy went out the door and I went to my room to hide the bottles.

Went outside to find the other three sitting in the smoker’s pit with 1000 yard stares. They’re talking about the impending Art 15s. Their careers. The Commander and BC.

I light up. “We’ll be fine. The [E-7] didn’t see.”

“How could he NOT see!? He was right fucking there!?”

“Plus, [E-6] saw! We’re screwed.”

I continued to insist. “Nah, nah, we’re fine. [E-7] was my platoon sergeant. If he didn’t say anything then, he didn’t see, and [E-6] won’t rat us out.” I left out the part where I’d covered for his ass enough times, he owed me, hence my confidence.

The next morning, I sat at my desk and finished my solo cup. My buddy shook his head but did the same. Waste not, after all.

A week passes. The E-6 mentions it once. Warns us to not do it again but he’s pretty sure the E-7 didn’t see. Easy enough. Everyone starts to think if we just never mention it again, it’ll be fine. We all pretend like it didn’t happen.

Around six months later, we’re all getting ready to leave. Summer is called ‘PCS season’ and it’s true. It’s time for us to rotate back to new units stateside. DS has already left, Supply chick leaves in a few days, I’m leaving the next week, and almost everyone else leaves over the course of the following month. 

My buddy goes out to smoke one day and the E-7 joins him. They joke around a bit. The guilt’s been weighing on him, so he brings up that night and comes clean to the E-7.

The E-7 gets pissed.

“YOU HAD WILD TURKEY IN THE OFFICE AND DIDN’T TELL ME!?”

When he told me he told the E-7, I got annoyed, but then he told me the E-7′s reaction and I just laughed. Yeah. That sounded like him, alright. I’d forgotten he’d mentioned before that Wild Turkey is his liquor of choice.

Also, the incident that forced both of them to go into the office that night? A patrol in the remote location broke protocol and went to McDonald’s off post for dinner, using the drive thru. Got an alarm call. Attempted to leave the drive thru, did not realize there was a curb and a dip. I think they broke the fender and damaged the suspension.

[bruciewayne]

nearly perfect

dyslexic steve rogers, steve + tony friendship, 1940s ideals, internal ableism(?) 

The Serum fixed so many things, and did more than fix. Erskine made him so much better than he ever could be, than he ever should be, really, and according to all the records, and all the posters and comics and black-and-white reels, he’s a perfect man. 

And he is. Nearly. He’s perfect in almost every way possible. Almost. If you were to look at him, nothing would be wrong anymore, if you were to tell him to run a city block, he could, fast enough to rival most cars, without breaking a sweat, if you were to send him to the front lines he could hold his own, he could lead, he could win.

But if you were to hand him a mission report, or a long list of European places along the front lines, or, hell, a list of all 48 American states, and tell him to read it aloud in a timed condition? The letters still swam and flipped and switched places pretty much however they pleased.

Didn’t fix that.

It was the very first thing he tested, after the whole street-fight thing. He pushed three cents into the hand of the first seller he saw and pulled the paper open to a random page (reminding himself to reign in his new strength) tried to read the article, he tried and he tried and it was like he was back in school and Miss Luthor was calling him stupid and striking him across the knuckles, and he was trying to defend himself and Miss was telling him to stop making excuses and Bucky was trying to defend him, saying that it wasn’t his fault, that he was just born like that, the way that his asthma wasn’t his fault, and Steve himself was just trying and trying to figure out the name of the author The Three Musketeers, wishing that he could just get it, the way everyone else could, the way he could look at something and copy it down on paper near-exactly with a blunt pencil.

Erskine made him look perfect, made him the perfect soldier, but he didn’t stop the letters from floating about and rearranging, and he didn’t stop him from looking at boys the way he should look at girls.

Didn’t fix that either.

But it’s fine. 

Because now, he’s actually respected, as a person and as a part of the US Army (he definitely won’t be if he tells them that other flaw), he gets the important stuff verbally, and just the details in writing, and even then, he can just pretend, and pretend and pretend, that he’s taking too long because he’s doing a thorough job (and he is, because he wasn’t about to lead his men, or send any men, into a place when he was absolutely certain that it wasn’t another place) and pretend that finally, finally, he’s just like everyone else (but he’s not, even though he was meant to be, according to Erskine’s journal that Howard gave him, he stood out, but nowhere near as much as he did before).

And then 70 years pass with him dead to it all.

He wakes up, and it’s not the first thing on his mind, but he hopes that he can just pretend again. Then he’s pushed into a room full of books and a slim metal thing that apparently has access to all the books in the world and then he’s given paper files about people he once knew and people he’s supposed to get to know.

The next few weeks are a blur, he overhears some people talking about how slow he is, and how bad his spelling is and how bad his handwriting is and one of the younger agents laughs and attributes it to his ‘old-man 1940s-ness’. He tries not to think about how that agent is probably older than him, technically. 

He’s grateful for that, in all reality, because he can carry on pretending, until, until when?

Until they realise that he’s far too dumb to be Captain America, he supposes that pretended could’ve flown in the past (barely a month ago), but now? Where everyone’s smarter and everything is faster and he’s expected to be smarter and faster, he’s not going to last. He’s just. Not going to last.

He makes it three months.

By this time, they (the Avengers) are all living in the (big, ugly, and straight from the future) Tower and Steve’s mostly caught up with the future. He’s allowed to like men now. Not that Captain America can be gay. But maybe Steve Rogers can.

Tony notices first. Not the gay thing, the other thing. The dumb letter thing.

“O, Captain! What do you think about it? Who we gotta send?” Tony asks as soon as the briefs are in their hands. The letters are still floating about, refusing to settle.

Steve tries to stall, because he can’t say ‘I don’t know’ (“Rogers! What on God’s green Earth do you think you mean when you say ‘I don’t know’? The words are right there, for God’s sake, stop horsing around for five seconds and actually try for once, maybe then you’ll have half a chance of living on your own dime.”), because he can’t seem utterly and completely clueless. He manages about three long and excruciatingly painful seconds (it’s been three months, it’s been long enough that he should be better, smarter, faster. And he is, but still only with the maps and the shapes and everything that isn’t fucking reading.), staring at the paper, trying to make sense of it with everyone’s eyes on him, before Tony breezes on, giving his opinions, as though it was Tony himself being slow (not that Steve has ever, in the short, short time he’s been here, seen him be anything under 70 miles an hour, even sleep-deprived and hungover, he’s always been so, so much faster than everyone else).

He hopes to God that he didn’t imagine that wink.

After the meeting, after they have a solid plan and a decent rollcall for the mission, Tony curls his hand and his elbow and tugs him back into the room just as he’s about to leave.

“I don’t wanna assume anything, and you can stop me if this is like, a whole galaxy off-base or something, but I made you something, uh, programmed really, the tablet’s been in circulation for a couple months already, made you a program, that dictates briefs, and whatever else you want to put on there, to you, ’cause, and uh, I’m not calling you stupid or anything, but I’ve noticed that you have a hard time with reading? So, here.”

Tony pushes a tablet in his hands and then steps away and rocks on the balls of his feet.

Steve takes it carefully in his hands. “I, uh, thank you, Tony, really, I, um, the whole reading thing, can you maybe… not tell anyone?”

Tony looks surprised but he agrees, “Do you want me to show you how to use it?”

“Please?”

Tony sits and gestures to a seat and launches into an explanation, “So, JARVIS pretty much runs this, you can type or talk and he’ll talk or type back…”

“...then I told her that the letters never stayed in the same place and--” Steve mimes a whip, “--right around the knuckles with the good old wood rule.”

“A wooden ruler!? I’ll be honest, a good part of me thought that that was fictional,” Tony admits, leaning back. They’re long past teaching Steve how to use the tablet and the sun’s long since on the other side of the planet, but they’re still in the conference room, far away from anything about personalised dictation programs.

Steve raises an eyebrow, “Well, gay marriage seems pretty fictional to me.” 

As soon as that leaves his mouth he feels his blood freeze and slow down in his veins, but all Tony does is nod, conceding, and says, “Touche.”

They’re silent, for a moment, watching the city below, before Tony speaks up again, “I don’t want to assume anything, but the whole letters thing sounds a great deal like dyslexia.”

At Steve’s blank look he explains, “It’s a thing, mental disability, that means you find it hard to read, that the letters move around. No effect on your actual intelligence.”

Steve knows that mental issues are treated much, much better nowadays, that Shellshock has a real name, and is a real Thing and isn’t ‘cowardly’ anymore (because there was nothing cowardly, ever, about kids waking up screaming because of the damn war). 

But taking in that he’s not entirely alone, or helpless, or downright retarded for the first time in his long twenty-five years? A fucking relief.

“Come to the workshop, I’ll have JARVIS run some tests, see if we can get you some overlays or something,” Tony says, standing up and reaching a hand out to Steve.

Steve takes his hand and lets himself be pulled up.

“You know,” Tony starts, when they sit back and wait for the results to render (and if, the results are already rendered, and JARVIS and Tony have a morse code shorthand, then that’s only something Tony and JARVIS know (and Natasha because she caught on the first time she was down here)), “I have anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD and alcohol and drug abuse on my file.”

“I’ve seen your file,” Steve says, confused.

“Dyslexia can go in yours and the only thing that’ll change is that anything printed, you’ll get on pink paper,” Tony explains, gently.

“JARVIS,” Steve starts, voice cracking a little, “official Avengers file change, Rogers, Steven Grant…”

-

‘insecurity’ for happy steve bingo