10. June 10
Never had she imagined summer in D.C. would be so hot.
Jo opened the window of her apartment, only to close them again a few moments later, as only more heat seemed to pour in from the outside. The sky was dark, heavy clouds hanging so low they seemed to touch the skyscrapers in Downtown. The question was not whether a storm was coming, but when it would start.
She shrugged and went to the bathroom. After a long, hard day of work, all she wanted was to take a long shower and sit in front of the TV with a glass of wine until she fell asleep. Enjoying the feeling of normality as long as it would last.
When she got out of the bathroom into her bedroom, dressed in a black tank top and short sweatpants, the thunderstorm had arrived. From the window she could see the harsh light of lightning, followed seconds after by growling thunder. A cracking sound came from the ceiling and the light went off.
"For god's sake, not now", she mumbled to herself. She went to the door, hammering on the light switch, but it didn't give her the intended result. Rolling her eyes, she went to the next room in order to search for a new lightbulb, punching the light switch of the living room, but to no avail. She stood still for a moment, then went to the kitchenette and opened the fridge. It was dark inside and didn't make a noise. Electricity was off, lightning must have found its aim.
Using the rest of the dim evening light, she fumbled in the kitchen drawers for spare batteries, a torch and the old radio, which was old enough to still work on batteries. She inserted some in it and tuned it to a local radio station. It started out as white noise, but while she was searching for her old lamp in her bedroom it became a slightly nervous voice telling everyone who would listen that there was a blackout in most of D.C. due to a stroke of lightning hitting the city's main energy supplier.
She went back to the kitchen with the small lamp in her hands and fumbled the batteries into it, bathing the kitchen in a soft, glowing light. She just hoped the bulb wouldn't fail her during the blackout. Jo opened the fridge just to do something, saw a bottle of white wine and took it out. "Ah well, while it's still cool…", she said to herself. Then she pulled a glass out of a shelf next to the fridge and poured herself some wine.
"Oh goddamn it" She heard a familiar voice cursing in the hallway.
She got up, still holding the glass of wine which was only half-full by now, opened the door and stuck her head out.
"What's wrong?", she asked, stepping out of the doorframe, but making sure she had a foot stuck in the door to hinder it from falling closed.
Steve was standing in front of his door, a grocery bag in his hands, kicking the door half-heartedly. "It won't open", he said.
"Must be because of the blackout", she replied. "The locks must run on the same circuit as the rest of the house. Not very smart, if you ask me…"
"Yeah, great", he said sarcastically. "At least now I know why I'm locked out. And you?", he said, nodding to the glass of wine in her hand, grinning as he did so. "Having a good time?"
"Want to join?", she offered.
"I'd love to." He smiled gratefully and she let him enter the flat before closing the door again.
She took the bag from his hands. "Groceries, I take it?", she said, and when he nodded she put it in the fridge. "Let's just hope it stays cool long enough"
"It's quite nice here, now", he said, looking around the small flat. "I like the green walls." He had only been here three times before, on her first night and then again sometime around Christmas, when she had invited him, Natasha, and Clint, over to dinner, ordered from a Chinese Take-Away down the street. And then, very shortly, in April. "What about the radio and the lamp, though?"
"Batteries", she replied. "My dad always told me to have some batteries and an old radio at the ready, just in case… and while I say this I realize that I just imagined this to having happened" She drank some wine on that.
He grinned and sat down on the kitchen table. "Still a good plan", he said.
"Want some wine? Or anything else?"
"Anything at all", he just said, so she poured him a glass of wine as well, then went over to the table and sat down opposite him.
"So, where did you go?", she asked.
"What do you mean?", he said.
"I noticed you'd leave the building every Tuesday, not coming back for hours. I'd of thought you went running, but then you're never wearing sports gear. I'm just curious, you know" She smiled at him, then emptied her glass and got up.
"I'm just visiting an old friend", he replied. "And good spotting there, that's fifty points for you"
"Fifty?", she laughed as she went to the counter and took the bottle. "A hundred at the very least!" She got over again and sat back down. "So about your old friend. Old as in…?"
"Peggy Carter", he said.
"Oh my…" She put down the bottle. "I didn't know she was still alive. How is she?"
"How do you know about her?"
"I'm known to do my research. It's sort of my special superpower. But you're avoiding answering…"
"She's old", he said quietly. "Suffers from dementia"
"I'm sorry", she said.
"She's got some good days, though. It's quite nice when she's got her lucid moments, but otherwise it's tough having one of your best friends not knowing you. Well, you know, let's talk about something brighter, yeah?" He took the last sip of his glass, and she refilled it without waiting for him to ask her to do so.
"Sure", she said. Trying to think of another topic, she listened halfheartedly to the radio in the background. The host droned on about the increasing birth rate he expected to come in nine months. "Have you asked Sarah on a date yet?"
He chuckled.
"So I take this as a yes, okay?"
"Last week, actually", he replied. "But I think I screwed up"
"Tell me. I was also called Dr Date in my classes"
"It was alright in my opinion", he said slowly.
"What did you guys do?"
"I took her to a movie, paid for popcorn and soda, and after that… well, after that I dropped her off at her flat again. You know, the way it's to be done, isn't it?"
She stared at him with her eyes wide open.
"Anything wrong?" he asked.
"And that is it? Like, all of it?", she wanted to know.
"Yeah, sure, that's what you do, isn't it? I thought taking her dancing was a little old-fashioned."
"Maybe like seventy years ago", she said, laughing. "Maybe even fifty years ago, but not now. That's like the same stuff we did three weeks ago. Paying for the ticket and the snacks doesn't make it a real date. Dancing would have been way better."
When he said nothing, she stopped laughing again.
"Sorry", she said, still chuckling a little. "It's just that you really shouldn't go to a movie for the first date. At least go to dinner before that, or after. But not just the cinema."
"You reckon?", he asked.
"Yes, I do… and I see your glass is all empty again" She reached for the bottle only to find it empty, too. "Jesus", she chuckled. "That one went down fast…"
A siren sounded from the window, going by fast. The radio host wondered how long it would take the city to restore electricity.
"Feel like Scotch?", she said after a few moments of silence. "I got a fine one here. You know, the one Clint brought with him on Christmas."
After about two hours, still in the ambient light of the single lamp on the table, the storm outside ravaging D.C., the last drop of Whiskey left the bottle into Steve's glass.
"You, like, drank about three times as much as I did", Jo giggled and held her glass high. "On Clint and his excellent Whiskey."
"On blackouts," he grinned and clinked her glass lightly with his own. "And I only drank so much more because my system's working that much faster."
"But," she replied. "You really are kind of drunk by now. Not as much as I am, yeah, but you are. Oh, just wait, I'll make the best Pangalactic Gargleblaster in the whole Universe, it'll so knock you off your feet" She got up and, somewhat unsteadily, went to the counter and took out a long drink glass from a shelf.
"What is a Pangalactic Gargle… something?"
She turned around to him, raising an eyebrow. "Good lord, Steve, don't you ever read a book?"
"I read Harry Potter. It was weird."
She rolled her eyes and started to pull out just about every alcoholic beverage she could find. "The Gargleblaster is from a book and supposed to be the strongest drink in the Universe", she explained. "And as it's fiction, there's no real recipe to it. The only rule when mixing it is for it to be seriously strong and tasty"
"And you want to drink this?", he wanted to know.
"Oh no, I won't, that'd kill me today. This one is just for you, I'm gonna stick with something simpler. Like…" she said, looking around the kitchenette. "Like wine." She poured a sample of all different sorts of alcohol in the glass and then added a sip of orange juice to it. She stirred the mixture with a long spoon, poured herself a glass of wine and walked back to the table, where she put the long drink glass in front of Steve and sat down next to him. "There you go", she said.
"It looks disgusting," he remarked.
"Go on, try first, bicker later"
He took the glass and held it to the dim light of the lamp. "It looks like it's already been eaten. At least twice."
"Must be the Bailey's. Go on, drink it."
With one more skeptical look in her direction he emptied the glass in one go, then shook his head.
"Wait for it," she said before he could open his mouth. "Just two more seconds."
"Okay, it's not that bad," he acknowledged.
"Yeah," he said later and leaned back, having just finished his fourth of fifth Gargleblaster. It was well past midnight and the storm was still raging, the radio host still complaining about the lack of electricity in the city, and the lack of emergency generators, which seemed to be restricted to hospitals. And his very radio station, which was why he felt obliged to tell the part of D.C. still having electricity about it. "Yeah, I do agree, it really kicks ass, this drink."
She merely giggled. "Another one?" she said and made to stand up.
"No, no, it's okay, right, it's okay," he laughed and pulled her back on her chair.
It was the first time he touched her, and her skin prickled where his hand had been. "Feel drunk now?" she asked quickly.
"More than I've felt since 1943," he said and made her giggle again.
"This is just too weird," she laughed.
"You mean getting drunk with someone who's seen 1943?"
"Kinda. But no, not really, it's something else. Ah, well, I don't really know. It's the first time we've really been talking without ever speaking about work, you know? It's just weird. Everything. My life and the rest. And yours. Don't you think?"
He just smiled knowingly and replied nothing.
"You know what? I think we should drink a round of water, yeah?" She giggled again, got up unsteadily and went to the fridge from which she took two bottles of water. "Look at that", she said surprised. "They're still sort of cool. There you go, catch it" She threw the bottle towards him, but it was much too high, so he got up quickly to seize it.
"You're a bad shot", he said surprised.
"I am, yeah. A terrible one" She smiled. "Why do you sound so surprised?"
"Because I thought, you know, what with all the training you got since September, and with the training you must've gotten in your childhood, that your skills were better"
"They are in about every other aspect", she said. "I don't mind being a bad shot. Never liked firearms, really. Being shot, and then Nunavut… that was kind of enough for me… I'm good at disarming, though" She fumbled on her water bottle, but the cap wouldn't budge. "While we're talking about improved skills, my water bottle opening ones aren't exactly working. Would you mind?" She held the bottle out to him, so he came over, took it out of her hands and opened it as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Which it probably was.
He stood right in front of her, his arms almost touching hers, his legs mere millimeters away from hers. He was much too close. She could see his unusually dark blue eyes, could see every single eyelash, even the bristles on his chin. He was much too close…
"Is it really only the fourth time you're here?", she said quickly.
"The first one doesn't count", he answered. "You fell asleep half an hour into the movie"
"That's because you brought this weird and very boring 1940's Italian classic. With subtitles"
"It was state of the art back in the forties," he smirked. "Here", he said and gave her the now open bottle. She took it out of his hand, holding her arm in an awkward angle, brushing his fingers as she did so. She put the bottle down on the counter to her right.
"We should…" he began, somewhat unsure.
"Mhm", she made.
Nobody moved. Jo looked him straight in the eyes. He didn't even blink.
"Really", he said again.
She only nodded. They were still standing at the counter, only millimeters apart. He was much too close.