Archive of Our Own ^beta

John had never thought of it as lying, exactly.

There was no deception, no falsehood to correct. He is a man. His name is John. Everything he’s achieved, he’s earned on his own merit. That wasn’t less true just because a different name had existed in his record before USMA. He knew there were plenty of people who wouldn’t see it that way, but he’d been meticulous. After his acceptance to West Point, he’d made sure every document carried the name John.

He’d been Cadet John Walker for four years, then commissioned as Second Lieutenant Walker after graduation. The thing was, the US Army only cared about an officer’s service record. They had no reason to dig into his high school transcripts, so they never had. Even West Point had checked them only once, during the application process. His dog tags read Walker, John F., and he’d served his entire military career with that name.

And it is his name. His, in every sense that mattered. What was written on his birth certificate had never affected his competence in the field, and his commanding officers had always been satisfied with his performance. He’d been lauded and decorated, awarded medals and commendations, and after so many years living as himself, he’d started to believe it wouldn’t have mattered if anyone had known.

His record spoke for itself, right?

He’d been awarded three Medals of Honor for Ops he’d led before the Blip, and now, in the aftermath of so many heroes lost, John was being handed Captain America’s shield, told to take up the mantle. He hadn’t expected it, and certainly hadn’t felt like he could possibly live up to the legacy Steve Rogers left behind, but those were his new orders, and John had always been a good soldier.

It had been a whirlwind from there. He’d been pulled off the special ops mission for Chile that he and Lemar had been prepping their guys for, then he’d been shuffled across a blur of senator meetings and public appearances and handshakes. Between that, there was training with the shield, cameras capturing footage of him performing with it, and preparing for an interview on Good Morning America.

It was all to “introduce John Walker to the public,” they said.

PR wanted it at his old high school, a way to show “where he started,” as a nod to Steve Rogers and his beginnings as the “little guy from Brooklyn,” and had it scheduled less than a week out. He’d been expected, as a Ranger, to be ready to deploy within as little as eighteen hours after an alert, but still, this had been fast. It hadn’t even been two weeks since he’d been announced as Captain America.

Thank god for Olivia and Lemar, who had been brought on by his side, who he could steady himself with in the moments between all the crowds and cameras. They had been his constants for so long: throughout all their early years, and later, returning home from all the foxholes of war. They were among the very few who had known him before he’d even figured himself out, and they had loved and accepted him through it all.

Maybe that’s why the broader reality had caught him off-guard.

He should have realized that having an expected broadcast set at Custer’s Grove High would have had someone looking into his time there. He should have known that government officials would take issue with discovering he hadn’t been presenting as the person they expected while attending the school they were about to showcase to the world. It was one of the reasons he’d always disliked working with officials: they were obsessively focused on optics, and it had frustrated him more than once when appearances were prioritized over the work he was actually trying to do.

He just wanted to do the job.

He knew that being Captain America came with higher expectations than anything he’d faced before, and he’d been grappling with doubts about whether he was truly suited to carry the shield, but those doubts had been about his own abilities and limits. About whether he, as a soldier, without advanced tech or the super serum, could ever measure up to a man who had fought alongside gods, battled aliens, saved the world, and then the universe.

But the government officials’ sudden discomfort about having John in the role wasn’t about any of that. It wasn’t about his training, his skill, or his dedication. It had nothing to do with whether or not he was capable. No, apparently, it boiled down to what was in his pants, and it would be “such a scandal” if the public found out he had “tricked” the brass who’d been praising his service because he lacked a dick.

It was absurd, and infuriating.

Granted, they hadn’t said it outright, but there had been a noticeable shift in how they’d treated him since that first week and a half, especially in the days leading up to the interview. At first, it had been small things: careful phrasing, pointed clarifications, deliberate omissions. Nothing overt, nothing explicit, and he’d talked it over with Lemar and Olivia, just to get a second opinion, to check if maybe he was reading too much into it. They’d agreed it was an unfortunately likely possibility, but neither of them had been present during the meetings themselves to confirm.

John finds his mind drifting back, especially to Senator Marwood. He had been the government official who had handed John the shield, the one who had announced him from behind the podium as the new Captain America. Marwood had been uncomfortably complimentary back then, praising him to an extent John had felt unnecessary; he was just doing his job, and didn’t need the overt accolades.

But the tone of the latest interactions had shifted.

Marwood had been present at all the meetings, but one particular comment at the end of a recent one had stuck with him. On its own, it was innocuous, even complimentary: “We all believed you were the man for the job,” but the way he’d held John’s gaze while saying it had made it feel like an accusation. Maybe it was the emphasis on believed, or on man, but there was displeasure within the statement, and John had been careful not to react to it.

Still, it eats at him enough that, in the locker room right before the interview, he asks, “Do you think I’m the man for the job?”

Lemar huffs, and casts that soft-eyed expression that he always has when John runs his mind in circles. “Don’t get in your own head,” he says, clapping John on the shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

John lets out a shaky breath, trying to absorb the reassurance, but the weight of everything—his doubt, the expectations, the scrutiny—presses down on him. He leans into Lemar, and his partner shifts easily to meet him, wrapping his arms around him. John let himself sink into that embrace, mind drifting back to how hard he’d fought just to step into this locker room at all. He’d had to work harder than anyone else, clawing for every scrap of respect as the “only girl” on the football team, needing to prove with every play that he earned his place there.

He’d been made Captain of Varsity in Senior Year.

Talking strategy always happened in the boys’ locker room, and taking the lead meant he had to be fully present there. Lemar had even put a sticker on one of the lockers for him—JW10—and he’d moved his gear into it during that final year, asserting himself among teammates who had spent years watching him prove his worth. Before that, he’d been forced to change in the girls’ lockers, then wait awkwardly at the door of the boys’ lockers until the coach finally gave him the nod to enter.

He hadn’t gone by John just yet, though anyone in his close circle knew he preferred to be called Walker. Lemar had used J as an initial, a placeholder borrowed from John Doe, until he could claim a name that truly fit. He’d gotten attached, though. He’d spent more than a few nights imagining himself as John Walker, liking that John was short, clear, and undeniably masculine. Olivia and Lemar had helped him brainstorm a few other ideas, but in the end he’d settled on this one—and stuck with it.

“You’ve got this, man. When’s the last time you met an expectation you couldn’t beat?” Lemar says, pulling back from the hug with an encouraging smile. He gives John’s shoulder one last squeeze. “Come on. Time to go to work.”

John takes a steadying breath. “Time to go to work,” he echoes.