Lovers in a Dangerous Time
She owned the café on the corner.
The one with the best minestrone he'd ever tasted. The one with the ugly plaid couches and the mismatched dishes. The one with the sketches on the wall and the giant squid painted in purple on the bathroom door. It was a hole-in-the-wall, unassuming and quiet place, frequented by students, hipsters, and senior citizens, a crowd of regulars who made it comfortably busy, but not too much so.
Steve appreciated the place. When he wasn't bashing the brains of bad guys with his shield, he liked to come here to unwind. Coffee and a newspaper. Simple things.
He'd found himself talking to her one afternoon. The café closed at three, but she'd flipped the sign and ushered him in anyway, making him sit down and bringing him a bowl of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. She'd sat across from him, cradling a café allongé in her long, thin fingers, with their chipped black nail polish. Here he was, talking to this strange girl as if he'd known her all his life - without even a hint of the awkwardness that usually accompanied his interactions with women.
And she was strange, all right. She had a fierce face - the nose a little sharp to be conventionally pretty, and something mysterious about her hazel eyes, peering at him over her glasses. Her hair was a riot of curls, which had been dyed bright blue. She was a combination of bookish and artsy, usually dressing in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, sometimes with a knit cap keeping her crazy hair at bay.
After the Chitauri attacks on New York City, Steve had eaten shawarma with his teammates, but on their way to scatter to the wind like dandelion seeds, he'd stopped by the café.
The windows had cardboard in them - blown out by one of the many explosions of that day. He sighed in relief as he read, scrawled in her looping hand, in black paint (or was it shoe polish?): "I assure you, we're open."
"Hey, are you open?" he called out, as he opened the door.
"First to make that joke today, you are. Hurr hurr. Funneeeeeee joke," came the reply, in a Yoda approximation that went right over his head. "Oh, hey, Slick. Flip the sign, will ya?"
Steve turned the "open" sign to "closed", and pulled the door shut behind him.
"Are you all right?" he asked. She caught sight of his uniform in the dim light, and her mouth worked, opening and closing like a goldfish.
"Yeah, I'm tiguidou," she told him. "I'm running the backup generator, so all the juice I have is in the coffee machine and the register." She set about preparing a pot of espresso, her deft hands pulling the machine and coaxing out the beautiful-smelling liquid. She dug under the register and came up with a clear, albeit dusty, bottle, which, when uncorked, smelled a little like liquorice. She poured a liberal amount into each cup, then hopped up on the counter, her legs dangling. She offered him a cup and tapped one of the bar stools with her foot. "Pop a squat."
"What is this?" he asked, taking a tentative sip. The dark, rich flavor of the coffee, the bitterness tempered by the round taste of aniseed, rolled over his tongue and went down smooth. "And you have a generator, good."
"I survived the Ice Storm of '98," she shrugged. "It's a leftover. If the world ends, people will still want their coffee, so I'll be open." She knocked back the espresso laced with liquor. "It's Sambuca, you looked like you needed it. Fortifying. Nonna's special." She tipped more into his cup. "So what's up with the stars and stripes, there, Slick?" she eyed him over her glasses, as he sipped the drink, the warmth seeping through the porcelain cup and into his grazed, bleeding hands.
"Someone had to stop those… things," he told her. "I'm Captain America."
She pursed her lips for a moment, doing some mental arithmetic, then shrugged, looking at him over her shoulder in a very French gesture. "All right."
She hopped down from the counter, the tinny-sounding boom box in the corner playing 80's dance hits. She grabbed a broom, spinning it, then dipping it like a pretty girl, and set about sweeping up some glass.
"Let me help," Steve said, grabbing the garbage can and a dustpan from behind the counter.
"You've got more important things to be doing than helping me clean up this disaster area," she gave him a look.
"All I've got waiting for me is paperwork. I'd rather be here," he scooped some glass into the bin.
"Ew, paperwork," she twirled around to Duran Duran.
"My sentiments exactly," he dumped more glass out. "I suppose this is a weird time to ask if you wanna go for coffee sometime, isn't it?"
She let out a bark of laughter.
"Yep, pretty much the cherry on top of the Crazy Sundae that is my life right now. Coffee date with Captain America," she chuckled, her rich, low voice husky with the laughter. "You know I'm Canadian, right?"
Their second "date", after she closed up shop, was to a classic movie night. Gone With The Wind was playing, and the two crept into an empty theatre, sitting up at the back. She perched her feet on the seat in front of him - wearing a pair of glittery purple Kicks - and reached for the popcorn.
"That woman was so pretty," she murmured. "Shame what happened to her."
"What did happen to her?" he asked.
"Oh, right, I forgot there's like seventy years of pop culture to fill you in on," she waved a hand. "She was a manic depressive, but she died of TB."
"My Mom died of that," Steve said softly. She squeezed his fingers sympathetically, looking at him curiously. "Well, pneumonia. But the consumption wore her down to nothing first."
"Pretty awful stuff," she shook her head.
It occurred to Steve, as he was kissing her on her front doorstep at the end of the third date, that they didn't actually know each other's names. The realization hit him a second before she verbalized it.
"I really want you to come up," she told him, pulling out of a kiss for a gasp of air. "And you know what, Slick? I don't even know your real name."
"Steve," he said.
"Eveline," she wrinkled her nose. "Most everyone calls me Evie. Except my mother," she held out her hand, then pulled her hands away and hooked them through his belt loops, pulling him towards her to kiss him again.
"Good night, Evie."
Their fourth date. They watched a movie on her couch. 80's dance movies were, she assured him, the shit, as she put on the DVD for Dirty Dancing.
"Why are we watching if they're shit?"
"No, no, THE shit. When something is THE shit, it's the best. If it's just shit, it's garbage."
"I'm never gonna get a handle on this lingo."
"Eh, just fucking curse a lot."
He laughed.
It was their seventh date. He'd learned so much about her – her parents were divorced, both living in Montreal. "Dad's always chasing after leggy blondes younger than me, ick" – she wrinkled her nose. She still had a living grandmother, her Italian Nonna, to whom Steve could attribute her fabulous cooking skills. She'd made a pan of vegetarian lasagna – had even made the pasta by hand – that absolutely melted in his mouth. They were eating limoncello granita on the fire escape in the July hear when she'd invited him to stay the night.
He'd been surprised at how quickly he said yes.
She lay spread beneath him, her long, thin limbs encircled by a curling, intricate vine of grapes and leaves inked into her skin. He kissed every leaf as he slid down her body, her gasps and shudders driving him forward. There was nowhere he would rather have been, in this instant, as she drew him into her and spun her magic over him. The softness of her body yielding to the hardness of his, the gentle ebb and flow of the pleasure they drew from each other slowly.
He loved her.
A/N: Dunno where this is going, but I guess I'll find out when we get there. This was very stream-of-consciousness writing.
*tiguidou: Québécois for 'it's all good'. Pronounced like Tiggy-doo.