Chapter 10: The Coney Island Cyclone

AN: EDITED BY PPMB FOR OCTOBER, 12th, 2015.

Thanks again. After this first date is over I can work on the dramas and the feels-but don't worry. Their closeness can only grow from here. At some cost, I'd imagine. And oops- looks like there's some rocky business ahead. Want to find out what it is? Well, read on to find out!

"There it is, the Spinning Cyclone." Steve announces as they get halfway to the dock. Beside him, Beth looks on in wonder. The pier is breathtaking. There's wraps of holly leaves, butches of bright crimson poinsettias, the wafting smell of hot dogs and hot cakes and other goodies all through the air. From across the way a muscular carnie man waves on with a brilliantly pink shade of cotton candy.

"Oh! Do you mind if we play some of the little carnivals games before the Cyclone? I swear, I haven't been down here since I was a kid."

Steve smiles, but his eyes remain suspicious over the rough looking mustached Italian man who's hailing them over to toss rings. "I hear ya. Sure, that sounds great. Besides, I think I know how to undermine their tricks this time 'round."

"Do you now?" Beth's voice changed into an octave of amusement. Steve cracked his fingers in front of him, accepting the challenge.

"I used to be a bit of a weakling when I was a kid. Pretty sickly, honestly. But now I've got a score to settle."

"Alright, well let's see that in action, Soldier Steve."

Blushing, Steve takes a turn at the "Strong Man" hammer smash. In one good swing Steve manages to bounce the weight to the bell 15 times (Beth counts with her hand clasped over her mouth and by jumping up and down herself in sheer disbelief)—and then, like a tiny rocket, both weight and bell collided together, rattled through the air and into the black silvery water. The carnie gives Steve the evil eye, and quickly Beth and he make off for the next game, trying to hold back their laughter.

"Weakling? I don't believe that for a second."

"I'm tellin' ya, it's the honest to God truth!"

"You just broke that man's spirit 15 times, Steve! 15 times!"

Steve sheepishly waves off the idea. Well his great grandfather broke my spirit nearly 5 times that amount. What goes around, comes around.

"Okay, alright, I'll tell you what: you play the rest of the games, and I'll just watch. But if they're pulling anything funny on you, I'm stepping in."

"And by 'stepping in' you really mean you'll make them cry in shame from your amazing strength?"

"You're great at reading my subtext, Beth."

The next game is a get up of tossing a baseball to knock over a tower of glass bottles. Beth seems almost joyful that the game still exists. Steve believes her for certain now when she was raised on baseball. She grips the ball like a bro, hand perfectly lined to throw a slider pitch of all choices. She leans her arm back to throw, but stops when she notices Steve's patronizing look.

"I know the score from even back then, don't you worry. But I think I got 'em beat this time."

She throws the ball with a burst of strength, but it crushes harshly against the bottles and slides down it.

The carnie gives her an up and down look that makes Steve feel surprisingly antsy.

"Darlin', I guess you're the reason why they call it a slider, hahaha!" The carnie's voice is deep and throaty as Beth huffs in response at him, but keeps her good humor.

"Again," She demands. The ball is tossed back.

Her eyes glide over to Steve, and a strange pulse shoots through his spine like she'd just called his name. Walking over, Steve eyes what her plan is. Beth smiles smally at him, and motions for him to help out, and soon Steve finds himself standing behind her, his right arm gentle at he holds her hand that curled around the ball. His other is carefully behind his own back, less he get the nerve to touch her waist.

"One," Steve's breath is hot against her ear. "Two," He leans their arms back, and—"Three!"

Faster than anything, they're both jerked forward, (Steve's careful to hold Beth in place and keep her arm in mint condition) and the glass bottles smash inwardly all at once like a bowler's strike, cascading into each other in a sharp ribbon-like waterfall of shards. In his arms, Steve can feel Beth holding in her chortling laughter. Without bothering for a prize, Beth tugs on his sleeve to run, clutching the fabric.

"The Cyclone!" She calls, "Hurry!"

Steve chases after her breathlessly, laughing more than he has in 70 years.

At the gate to board the ride, they stop to catch their breath. Beth is blown away by how far Steve can run, and yet only need a few gasps of air to be right as rain. Army training must have intensified 10 fold since her brother joined. Her hair twisted around her neck, running down her coat.

"When's—the last time—you rode it?" her thumb jerks to the ride.

It's been over decades and decades, a full bodily change, and a war, but The Cyclone still makes Steve's stomach queasy just to look at it.

"Oh man, it's been such a long time. When I was with my best friend, a long time ago." The laughter slowly drains from Steve's voice as they wait for Beth to breath normally again.

"Your best friend?"

"Yeah, Bucky," Steve's voice slows, dripping into a somber tone. "His full name was James Barnes." Steve leaned against the railing, staring down into the sea. "I'd known him since I was five."

"What's he like?"

"A troublemaker." Steve wanted to laugh, but he found it to empty to even try. "But he was brave, and kind—if he was here right now, he's be talking you up a storm. He had a way with women. You'd probably like him a whole lot. Everyone did."

Beth tried to smile, but the weight of Steve's words held it down, and she could only look on.

"I don't doubt his abilities, but you're pretty unforgettable yourself, you know."

Steve fought the urge to shrug like he had at Tony over something that was possibly true, possibly not.

Steve settled for a quiet "Thank you."

She approached the railing herself, her blonde hair whisking in the wind beneath the dangle of Christmas lights. The bulbs casted little bright spots in the water that blended and bowed with the crash of the waves, distorting the blackness of the bay. She let the moment wash over for what seemed like a long time.

"If you don't mind me asking, where is he now?"

"He—he was..." Lost because of me. "KIA."

Their shoulders touched as she carefully settles in beside him, each pair of blue eyes misty as the shoreline that crashed and swayed beneath them. Beth noticed how tight Steve's hands were along the rust of the grey-green rail, and slowly, without daring to make eye contact, and laid her hand over top of his. Steve's own crystal eyes widened briefly, shocked by a sudden warmth. He looked at their hands and he prayed that his weren't shaking.

"I'm…I'm so sorry. Um," She fumbled briefly, her lips wind-chapped red, trying to find the right word, or the right timing. A soft silence passed where nothing came from either of them. Eventually, Beth tried to press forward.

"If you don't mind me asking again," Beth's voice was respectful, yet hoarse over the breeze. "Was it Iraq or Afghanistan?"

Steve blinked, his mind turning for a moment of confusion before he realized that this was the moment where he had to stop pretending this was 1943. This was 2013. This was reality.

Wake up, a voice whispered coldly to him.

Carefully Steve's thumb traced across the bottom of Beth's palm, feeling the soothingly warm, yet worn skin that was equally soft and equally tough to his own, possibly from a time of working as a waitress, no doubt. Self-consciously Beth shuffled beside him, but she couldn't bring herself to shyly pull away like she wanted. She was stunned; the way his eyes were taking in their paired hands was…so…

"Honestly," Steve's timbre voice dropped low and soft. "It's pretty recent, and yet." He paused again, and Beth watched his adam's apple bob sentimentally. His eyes were at the sea again, passive and distant. "It feels like a thousand years ago."

Beth's eyes felt heavy, overcome with weakness of just watching him, the blue of his eyes, blond of his hair, pale of his skin, fading like the clouds passing overhead, perpetually in motion, imploding, directionless.

She often felt that way as well, engulfed by the sky, cast out by the sea. Blue, upon blue, upon blue in their eyes, reflected out only into the colour of sadness.

"Steve, I'm so sorry," She shook her head slowly, the long tendrils of her blonde hair shifting gently against his shoulder, and she wanted to press herself into him, to stop him from—from disappearing again out to sea, but she couldn't. She just couldn't break that barrier so quickly. "I know that's probably all you hear anyone say, and I'm sure that…that means nothing to you."

She gripped his hand tightly for a moment, squeezing some of her will into his hand before she carefully pulled away, but suddenly Steve stopped her by grasping her free hand with his own. She blinked in surprise almost as much as Steve did, and there they stood on that dock in December, held together by the impulse that Steve Rogers finally allowed to move from within himself into physicality. They both stared at their hands again, and it was Beth's turn to trace her fingers across his knuckles, feeling the chasm that seemed to exist between each finger, each bone tough and lean.

"No," Steve began softly, his breath showing in the chilly swirls of the air. "No. Thank you, Beth, really." The blue of his eyes seemed sad and lonely, but something seemed to stir within their depths, and it made Beth smile against all the pain she suddenly carried in her chest. "You'd be surprised how much no one pays attention to…" He cut off again, his jaw tight.

"It's okay. I'm not going to lie to you Steve, I've been fortunate enough to have never lost anyone. But, I've seen some kind of suffering." Beth replied hastily, as if now the words were spilling out of her in white clustered patches of tangled emotion. "I mean, I see it too. People who aren't directly affected by such a tragedy, but I see it still. All the time at my job, at my apartment, in my nightmares. All those people? During the attack—I just." Her throat felt pinhole tight, and she struggled to not gasp for air.

She pulled her hands away from Steve swiftly, curling her shoulders in vainly withheld embarrassment. "I've never been to war, but I felt like I was going to die that day. And, and I—I think I watched people die that day—and now I see what's left—day in and day out, I see people struggling for reason and to make sense of what they've lost." She looked Steve fully in the eye. "Of who they've lost, and I always think: 'Why me?' Or, I think that it's only me."

Beth's chest rattled as she took in a deep breath, eyes searching Steve's somber expression for any type of rebuttal, but she only found that he was listening. Listening like no one else ever seemed too. "But," She faintly continued, her blue eyes brilliant and direct into Steve's. "I see people that I serve at the café, and I look them in the eye and I feel their pain, and I can't forget. Every day, I am reminded that I'm not alone."

Steve paled for a moment, and Beth felt a thin layer of sweat line her palms as the silence pressed between them. Something dark passed over Steve as he considered her words. Something shadowy and it made him shiver.

Alone. A customer, all alone. Is that what this is? Was this all…out of pity? Is that what she saw when she looked at me? Is that…why?

"Is…is that why you asked me out?" Steve's voice came out nearly empty. "You think I'm some kind of sympathetic nutcase lookin' for compassion?"

"What?" Beth's eyes widened. His question was like a slap to the face after all she had confessed. "No! Of course not!" She shook her head fiercely, her eyes bright. Suddenly she stepped forward, nearly wanting to stand on her tip-toes to meet the blond soldier eye to eye. "I asked you out because I felt something towards you—that—that—" Beth felt hot tears stick to the corner of her eyes and she felt stupid all over again. "That maybe you lost something in that attack too! I look at you and I see someone that's maybe just as lost as I am."

Steve's mouth opened to reply but no noise came. He tried again. Again. Finally: "Beth, I—"

But by then it was too late. She could see it all in his eyes though. He didn't believe her.

"This was a mistake." She quipped icily, her rage and her despair bringing a quiver to her voice as instantly the thought of going back home to her cold apartment rushed to her. To cry herself to sleep over the ache the rang through her chest like funeral bells; bells that shook New York's memorial services that reminded her that she survived to go back out into the world and suffer all over again. She was the mistake. She was useless—to her brother, her parents, those wounded by the Battle. She couldn't help anyone. What could she give? Was it really pity she was giving after all? Couldn't anyone else see that she just wanted to give compassion—to share—to share in—something? Maybe she couldn't be a hero like the Avenger that saved her life, like her secret idol that was Captain America, but she had to do something, right? Was it so wrong of her to try?

She just wanted a connection.

Beth's teeth clenched as she turned on her heel, marching away, not trusting herself to look back because she's never told anyone that before, not a single friend, nor her parents, or the police or her pillow her greatest fear like that, so quickly and numbly and stupidly—and knows she'd just burst into tears and she'd be the nutcase.

The distance along the dock stretched further and further between them as she left, a woman shaped flurry of soft coat buttons and rippling yellow ribbons that were tattered and discolored in the wind. The wind pushed back at her but she kept on moving, her face tight with frustration.

When this wind hit Steve, it just damn near knocked him into the freezing Atlantic Ocean, and, had he been less than a genetically alerted super solider, he'd gladly let himself drown there. A pair of eyes were struggling to open in the back of his mind that made his head ache and his teeth grind, but he forced them down.

Wake up, the voice said, louder.

He put a boot forward and began to chase after his future.

"Wait!" He called out to her, just as he had in the café which seemed so long ago, and suddenly he had caught up to her fast paced footsteps uncannily quickly, their shoe prints echoing in the snow behind them, intertwining. He reached out fast—fingertips barely touching the fall of her hand, and the heat from her body nearly burned him from the inside out in shame. "Wait, wait, please! Please wait!"

"I'm—I'm the lousiest date ever. I know that, I understand, and you have every single right to walk away right now. I promise I won't follow, and you won't see my face ever again." Steve confessed to her back, his chest heaving, not from exertion, but from the anxiety that had been eating him alive for nearly four months now. Just like I told Peg's friend on the phone, he'd never hear my voice again, Steve allowed a whip of depression to chill through him, hard and fast in its pain, and then he pushed it back together again. I'd disappear, believe me, if I only knew how.

Wake up! The voice practically hissed at him, and Steve swallowed hard, thinking, but it continued:

Say it. Say it even though it hurts. You don't have to tell her everything. But you have to give her something of yourself. She gave a piece of her to you, and she's practically a stranger. That same voice whispered inside of him.

So who are you, Rogers? What can you give beyond the mask?

"I'm—I—just—But…thank you," He decided. "I think I needed a dose of reality—because I—I often I find myself thinking that I'm not just lost; I'm lonely, pathetic and useless. But, my God," Steve slowed down his speech, words tumbling and wrapping together in their excited passion. "But if someone like you—" He slid his fingers into between the spaces of hers and nervously pulled her closer, closing the distance so that they stood only a foot apart. "—could look at me and—and see past that—could see…that there's something more beyond that, well, I'd be a complete fool to watch you walk away right now."

He then dropped her hand, remembering himself, and he flushed nearly as red as his sweater.

"But I'll let you." He added dryly, stepping back, allowing her space.

She stopped. Slowly, Beth turned to look at him, the blonde swirls of her hair plastered and damp along her cheeks while she stood there, shaking in her boots, bewildered, and her hand feeling strangely jittery from where he had touched her.

"I didn't mean to offend you, Steve. And I didn't mean to drop some over-dramatic bombshell on you, either," Beth blushed as well, glancing away offhandedly. "It's just…I haven't had this much fun in such a long time, and laughed, and talked and just…yeah. Talked. And I guess I just let myself get carried away. I think I say really stupid things sometimes that normal people never would."

"Well, from what I've found these 'normal' people walk around and pretend like the earth wasn't just invalided by aliens a few months ago—so, I'm glad. Please, don't be like them."

She smiled softly, bringing up a hand to discreetly wipe a frozen trail of moisture from her face. "You too." She added simply.

He seemed to grimace at that. "This may sound really cheesy of me to even bother saying trying this but: could we start over? Er, maybe?"

Beth's smile became bigger, and she glanced at her own boots, feeling silly, considering.

"Okay." She added chipperly, after a moment of watching the man before her look more and more concerned. "But only if I introduce myself properly this time. I'll—just lay everything across the table for you to see, so we can both run in the opposite directions if we want. You can jump into the ocean and I'll ride the Cyclone till I die."

Instantly the soldier's memories exploded like a firework in his mind, and Bucky Barnes was before him—his best friend, and they were just dumb kids sneaking onto the Cyclone one night—but soon the image faded to pitch, and it was soldier Barnes, and Captain America, standing side by side, overlooking a mountain crevasse, waiting for a train that would change everything between them.

"Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?" Bucky's dark eyes strained to look at Steve over the ice in the wind, and the pulling maw of the pit below.

"Yeah, and I threw up?" Steve answered, the memory all but unforgotten like the taste of vomit that would come up later that night after he'd try and drink dry an entire destroyed bar to forget about this moment, and any second, he'd ever shared with his best friend.

The black scalp of Bucky's messy hair shook back and forth, his voice tight in awe. "This isn't payback, is it?"

Steve smiled then, perhaps for the last time in 1943. "Now why would I do that?"

Steve's smile slowly made itself way across his lips. "Alright." He took a step forward, and extended his hand formally. Give just a bit. He reminded himself. Anything. "Ma'am, my name is Steve Rogers, and I'm absolutely awful when it comes to talking to women."

Beth couldn't help it. She laughed. "Hullo Steve. I'm Beth Ore, and I believe I'm slightly neurotic with stress issues." She reached out for him, extending a hand.

This. This felt familiar. Steve smirked at her, and mustered up his best impression of the legendary lady killer that was his best friend. "Well, Beth, if I may be so frank. Would you care to get lost with me tonight?" He grasped her hand, and for a single instant, he forgot about the ocean behind him.

Then he let go as her eyes glittered mischievously. "Pretty smooth line for someone who's terrible at talking to women."

Steve shook his head, the exhale from his nostrils misty and fading behind him, like her words were a blow to the face. "I learned that one a long time ago, but I'm glad it's not in bad taste." Bucky, buddy, if you could only see me now. What would you say?

Beth walked closer, keeping her fingers out of reach and just watching the way Steve padded carefully alongside her, like she was a ribbon-and-buttoned-up fawn he was meant to frighten.

"No." She glanced at him, scrutinizing the stylized cut of his hair, the nervous brush of his lashes when he blinked, and decided that she liked what she saw, as well as what she felt. "Not in bad taste at all."

Steve swallowed dryly at her, unsure of what was to come of this.

You'd tell me I'm a stupid wreck.