AN: OVER 200 REVIEWS? OVER A WEEK LATE? NEARLY OVER FINALS? WHAT. IS. THIS. MADNESS. THANK YOU.

Part 2/3

It's 2 am, I have a final in four hours, and I literally can't function enough to think of a song. So. Just take your favourite song and shove it in there.


The cool kick of an air-conditioning rumbling on to warm the apartment greets Steve's body as he walks into her living room. The next is the intense bombardment of the state of her living room. It could be summed up in just one word: Unexpected.

Toy nut crackers in a line from fattest to thinnest. A pine scented candle. Shiny wrapped boxes with ornate satin bows. Dark forest greens, blistering scarlet reds, shades of white and blues draped along the furniture. There was even the smallest tree Steve had ever seen sitting on a stand on a stool to the left of him by the door. Sure, it wasn't the extravagance of Tony's Tower, but there was something oddly familiar about the old sewed blankets and tinsel and pine needles drooping into the carpet at his feet that made him smile.

"Wow. In dime, in for a dollar, I'd say."

Beth pauses at the door. She's had to have heard him wrong. Do people even say that? She thinks to herself curiously.

"Excuse me?"

He motions to all of her apartment.

"Your home. It's much…more festive than I remember." He braces against the smooth wood of the front door rather awkwardly. "Although, granted, I wasn't in the best shape to be a furnishings critic."

"Y'know, I always say that food take precedence over fashion any day. I mean really, it was chocolate muffins, or it was death."

He grins. "McDonald's was really good for my first time there."

"Better make it your last if you hope to—" She stops herself flatly.

"What was that?"

"Um," She filters. She can't even joke about how ridiculously in shape Steve is. Now that he has mentioned dimes, she's pretty sure she could use them to bounce a few off of his abs. And, just to spite her, somehow, it really, really subtlety shows with how he's just wearing a plain, almost dated, kind of sweater. Great. Now and you're blushing, you freak. The last then he needs is you aiming more things at him—first his side with Ronda—now you and solid round coins.

She does not sprint for a diversion. She leaps for it. "Do you not celebrate Christmas? I'm so sorry if that's too—much?"

This brings his smile back. "Never with such incredible details—I mean, just look at that tree! It's so tiny."

"It's an apartment tree!" Beth defends sharply.

"May I take a closer look at it?"

A hand scratches at her hair, feeling the lingering of sticky hairspray. She's so unprepared for Steve to just be here. She's not even sure how to go about entertaining someone that wasn't staying for more than a night—next to Ronda, who mostly entertained herself. "Sure—I'm gonna go make us hot chocolate."

The softly shimmering tree rhythmically turns itself on a small round platform. Steve has to wait a few turns to catch a view of all the intricate paper-towns and people and figures on every branch. It's almost like a map of some sort—but Steve has trouble keeping up with all the spots. The locations seem so foreign to his tongue. He glances at her bookshelf in the corner, and suddenly feels so absolutely self-conscious about his own merger education beyond the military. And drawing cartoons for the Sunday paper. On a tiny branch, Steve notices a familiar pattern. Green. Purple. Red. A little paper Hulk holding onto a pine for dear life. Quizzically, Steve searches to find a Santa Hatted Iron Man, some thin lil' guy with some kinda bug on his chest—it's far too undetailed for even Steve's eyes to process—and a hammer that had cracked open his ribs like his bones were made of eggshells.

He can hear her gentle sock-y footsteps before she's even in the room. He straightens so that he doesn't even allow talking to her with his back turned. "It's so…unique."

The bottoms of the mugs hit the table with a thump. "That's a word for it."

He runs a finger faintly over the eye of a circular, red, white and blue shield, hidden deeper than the others. It's not nearly as artistically constructed as the other paper crafts. The circles are not proportioned. The shading in for the glinting light is coming from the wrong direction. It looks slightly bent to the side. His heart picks up its pace in a nervous gallop.

"Did you make all of these?"

She suddenly dissolves into a fit of laughter. "Ronda did. She made mine and I made her ornaments on her tree. We can't afford actual ones—and my folks claim that they get complete dibs on the families' back in Oklahoma. I can barely hold a crayon straight. She's a budding 'street artist"." Steve watches Beth make rabbit ears with her fingers and flex them up and down over 'street artist'. "She's so great with her work—it's just sort've small scale. She'd make a killing if she did necklaces."

His eyes jolt back to the locations and mini-maps. "And the clippings?"

"Oh." Her voice seems taken-a-back. "You noticed those? Wow. Um. Okay. Well, those are where my brother has been located—he's in the army, I don't know if you recall me telling you that."

Steve feels like a thin metal rob has been struck to his side— he wants to crumble. He never had the civilian experience for waiting for a sibling to come home—just his dad. And when that never happened, the world might've well gone to flames. The tiny pieces of paper suddenly seem so old. So much like Aesop's Fables going up in black, lifeless ashes.

"How long has he been gone?"

"It'll be two or three years this new year," Beth flusters uncomfortably. "Please sit down."

He eases down, unsure of how much distance is needed between them, before he settles for the middle cushion, with Beth leaning off the edge of the cushion with an actual arm.

She clears her throat. "Would you like a tissue? Your nose. It's all red. Natasha mentioned that you'd probably be sick—and yet you're outside in the freezing wind riding a motorcycle."

"My—?" Steve begins tactfully. He almost wants to cover his nose. "No—I'm not trying to make anything worse. Or upset Nat. I promise, I just get antsy about this whole ordeal. It um, really means a lot that my friends are so interested in you, but I want to spend time with you too, and it just made me realise that this could be it for the morning."

"You really don't like being doted on, do you?"

"It's not being guarded that bugs me. I just don't want to be rude."

She sits up straight—Steve knows she's going for a tissue box. "What if I told you that sniffling and sneezing and coughing was all part of being sick?"

Steve chuckles scratchily, fingers uncomfortably tight around the mug. The mug itself has a cheerful looking snowman on it, and he's careful to not even touch the fake painted frost along the edge.

"No, really!" Beth buffets busily, checking her cabinets for a box. "How long has it been since you've so much as had a case of the sniffles?"

Steve feels the weight of the mug in his hand dragging noticeably heavier, vaguely aiming its way downward towards the center of his lap. He clears his throat uncomfortably.

"Oh…you know…a while."

She plops down beside him with a tissue in hand. This time she's much, much closer than even he had insisted before. "You're so oddly mysterious for someone so completely genuine."

More laughter—his lungs are so powerful that she can feel the cushion shake under her flannel leggings. "Is that so? I always thought I was one of those clear bells, you know? A…real open book."

Beth's delightful eyes glance at him in slight daring amusement. A long finger carefully prods him just above his ribcage through the mesh of his sweater—it almost tickles. Unsure of how to respond, Steve blushes at her easiness to touch him. Beth's grin is insidious, and Steve waits for something bad to happen. Because that's usually what happens when he starts beaming.

"What?" He asks her, desperately pushing the self-conscious nudge out of his voice.

A hand balances her chin carefully. "Mm—I'd say more so an open wound?"

Another question to see his side. Steve flushes deeper. "Hey! Teasin' a guy when he's down isn't fair." He takes the tissue just for something to block her eyes with.

"Is that a feather?"

Steve reels internally. A feather would be his downfall.

She lithely reaches over and gently pulls a dangling white tuff from Steve's hair like a proper magician. "Dare I even ask?"

Steve opens his mouth for a witty retort. He's got nothing. The gentle waves of her hair are slowly peeling themselves from her skin, catching onto the cool, dampness of Steve's long-sleeved shirt, lacing it golden and blue.

"Seriously. You're frowning really hard about something. That's begging for me to ask you."

He looks at her from the corner of his eyes, straightens his mouth, and sighs. A hand gestures out in front of him, pretending to hold on to his ability save face. "See, if I had a beer, I would just drink it. Right now. And not stop."

"D'you wanna beer at 8 in the morning?"

"Can't say it doesn't sound like a bad idea."

"You don't strike me as a drinker—Wait—" Her hand reaches out and lays itself on his arm firmly. He can feel the flush from her fingers soaking through the tough stitches in his sleeves as it she's stroking hot coals for a fire. "It only took you, like, two beers, right? When you were younger?" She says softly, lingering over the fragileness of all he had told her that night.

"To get drunk, yeah—" Steve corrects his stare from her hand. It isn't too big of a deal—right? Steve staggers through his thoughts. I mean, this is what going with a gal is like. Heck, we've already slept next to each other—he tries to chuckle at his own inside joke, but it makes his teeth feel sore as memories collide together before him. There were more than enough times that Bucky tangled his own ribcage together from laughing so hard at Steve dry-heaving across a shady, busted up, speak-easy. "I really couldn't hold my liquor well, either."

"Couldn't? You should meet my brother, holy God, talk about someone that shouldn't be allowed to drink."

Steve's mouth twitches at the thought of Stark. "I've got a pal that needs that title as well."

"And what's his name?"

Steve swallows drily with how close he was to just blurting out 'Stark'. Boy. Talk about tactless, Rogers. "I really wouldn't like to say."

"A military musical pac and now a drinking pac, too? Don't tell me your job is also full of boxing secrets?" She leans towards him, her eyes bright with intrigue. "Give me a break!"

My job? His eyes spark wide. My job. Professional boxing trainer—of course. It's perfect. Saved your stupid self a mess of trouble, didn't you, kid? He can nearly hear Bucky writing him off.

"Actually—it's just kind've hard to talk about." Steve begins, the words rolling off his tongue, tasting strangely starchy—an uncanny, bitter-sweet flavor at the idea of lying while basically telling her the truth. "I've got a lot of legal obligations and contracts to keep about whom I train. Sort've…" He raises his eyebrows for a hint. "Well, you get the idea."

Beth's expression is beyond bewilderment. She lays a hand on his shoulder for support. "Famous? You train fucking famous people?"

He flitches at how easily she swears. He doesn't think he'll ever get used to women just doing that without the slightest of hesitation. It made sense being around nothing but military dogs in the Rank. It was basically the universal language of war, but with such intelligent blue eyes and that endearing smile of hers, it didn't seem right.

"Famous people," she repeats again, just for the taste of it. "…And I'm just a decent waitress."

She slumps against the cushions as Steve tries to shake off her strangely outraged look—a complete wreck of bedhead and hot chocolate and lots of blinking as she just studies him. She places both her hands to either side of her face to block his open attempt at peek at her. For a moment, she sighs loudly thorough her nose—and then she giggles.

"Sorry, I just had to mentally revaluate my life choices for a second."

He smiles, although he's pretty sure that's the worst thing to do, but she looks so distraught that it makes the cheery over-zealous atmosphere of the tinseled strained Christmas tree in her apartment juxtapose her in every way. It's really quite adorable. He shifts closer, the movement practically bumping her upwards from his strength, before lowering her back down. He secretly hates when he does that. At the Tower it was as if he was perpetually showing off when really he'd just forget himself. Here, it was distortedly detached, as if he was watching this well-built guy move whilst the ghost of 90 pound Steve Rogers looked on in horror.

Thankfully, she doesn't seem too keen to how close he's forcing himself to get. He just hates that he's making her feel bad and he hasn't even introduced her Tony. The anxiety inside of his body has sharp teeth that gnaw words into the lining: it can only go down from here as it eats at the bottom of his stomach.

"I—I'm sorry if I just dropped that on you too quickly. It's just—it's, uh."

She slowly lowers her hands. "…I'm pretty sure most of those choices end with pockets full of pennies that I swiped from Ronda." Her gaze steels over Steve's floundering apology and his mouth snaps shut. "I've found where I went wrong." Her smile is brighter than the top of her tree. "I can just blame Ron for everything. Perfect."

Steve laughs, but his side pricks at the mention of the gal with metal in her nose, which is just one more thing Steve doesn't understand, not just women, but Joes that pierce themselves as well. "Well, what did you want to do—before your calling came to serve the public?"

She fakes wounded pride. "I basically wanted to be a doctor." Her smile is pallid. "I wanted a life a little like an episode of Scrubs, you know? It just seemed so…full of meaning."

"Sure," Steve agrees, taking note that he should ask about whatever production she must be talking about. If it makes her want to take after such a steely profession, he imagines it has to be rather intense. Then she sighs, and Steve's smile breaks off into tiny pieces that settle into a frown. "Wanted?"

"Heh," she glances away again, and Steve follows her line of sight to the bookshelf. "Yeah. When I was in college. Before the…" She takes a breath, speeds up her words. She forces herself to not stare back at Steve's hidden wound. "When I was able to look at blood and not black out."

Steve can feel the thorns he's trying to move his words through—puncturing the gesture with blatant caring that she's probably heard a thousand times before that has just turned into a rosy garden of blanket statement compassion. She's buried herself too deep into the roots to feel anything close to elation. Steve understands entirely. It's all just like he's heard a thousand times before. "So… maybe you couldn't be a surgeon—just, something else like it. I can't say I'm too keen on the types, but I know there's other ways you could help a cause."

He can't believe he's nearly giving her the same speech that stooped down to spin him away from joining the army. …Collecting charred, alienated bodies in his little red wagon.

"Oh, I know," she says, her voice taking on that too-high quality that hurts his own ears. "I'm looking into it." She steals at glance at him shyly. "Slowly. I'm trying to warm up to looking into the brain. Maybe working with the elderly for Alzheimer's. Memories. Aging. Psychology, I guess."

Steve forces himself to get her attention. He takes her hand, expecting the searing end of a hot stove—but she still feels as warm as he recalled her to be to his touch. Surprised, she nearly pulls away, only to realise that it's one of the few times the soldier has moved to touch her. She gives him her full attention.

The words are hard, burning icicles he's holding in his mouth. They're splitting his lips, stabbing through his gums. He nearly wants to tell her that she could still become that doctor she wants—with time, and patience, and depression, and finally, possibly, therapy. He wants to spit it out. Everyone has shoved the idea of something being amiss for so long. Steve knows something is wrong with him—as much as he doesn't want to go talk to some quack about it. But…with Beth. If she was there…maybe. It's so close. He just can't shove the words from between his teeth, and she's waiting for him—waiting for him like Peggy waited for him. He can't believe that he's suggesting therapy around Christmas time in front of her sublime, miniature Christmas tree while she's wrapped in candy-cane pyjamas.

He can't do it. He retreats. He's a coward. He swallows the ice down and it hurts like bloody hell. He knows he's feeding that monstrous thing inside of him that makes him scream at night, scream the black air, freefalling into snow and nothingness. He can see it in her eyes at well, and he only prays that she will still bother to wait around for him like no one else seems could do.

"I think working with those who need it most," he taps the side of his own head, "right here, is a great place to start." His voice goes unexpectantly hoarse. Sitting here with Beth has made him forget that he's actually ill for the first time in over 70 years. "I won't go into the details if ya don't want, but I ha—have fellas that couldn't function after what they had to do."

She slowly smiles again, but it's dampened. It's like a punch to his gut that it's not what she wanted to hear—even if it's the same lie that Steve was told from his own father about accepting yourself.

"Your voice—I'm sorry," she smirks. "I shouldn't be expecting you to talk so much. I'll get you some cough medicine okay?"

Steve frowns. "That's too kind, really, it isn't—"

She tilts her head almost like a dog, and her light blue eyes are so intense that he has to force himself to stare back at her. Her smile gets even wider. Steve finds himself frowning harder in confusion.

"You're surprisingly cute when you frown."

He flushes. Give her a compliment, Rogers. You've only thought them to yourself ten-thousand times. "I think your hair looks very adorable when it's messed up."

He nearly cringes; he's caught between wondering if that was a compliment ending in an insult, or an insult wrapped in a compliment.

A hand jumps to the top of her head, pushing it down, but her other hand, wrapped in his, squeezes back in acceptance.

"So. About your friend you said you couldn't mention. Will I ever get to meet him?"

Steve feels like he's balancing so many things at once—it has to give. "Probably. He's doesn't really care for rules much anyhow."

"Sounds like Ronda."

Steve allows himself to agree only internally. He moves a freehand to touch at his side, but finds paper between his fingers. Bucky. He softens by gazing at the paper on the slowly turning tree.

Her brows narrow sharply, cutting into the soft features of her face. "Did he serve?" One of her fingers moves back and forth along Steve's arm relaxingly for an excuse for Beth not to look him in the eyes. "Like the one you mentioned on the pier?"

"No—No, I told you his name—er—Gosh, that seems like a forever ago, doesn't it?"

Beth shifts, pulling her legs up into the couch, and soon a bright ribboned bow on a candy-cane is touching his thigh. "Yeah." Her voice gets quiet. "It really does."

Silence.

Her fingers stop moving along his arm. Steve watches Beth looks around her own living room as if she's never seen it before, or is regretting not building a direct emergency exit dead ahead of them with a shiny star painted on the door. His palms sweat.

"…I can't remember his name."

Steve snaps to her attention as she speaks. The words are soft and sad, meaningful, and she didn't even know James Barnes. Her eyes are shiny, reflective of a sapphire crystal that is hanging off of her tiny Christmas tree. Steve wishes he knew what to do to make her feel better, but the words fall like slabs of stone into his shoulders and he can't move. He couldn't remember why Bucky had smiled for that photo. He couldn't remember why Bucky had to die. He couldn't remember why he was chosen to be Captain America. Losing a name in three days was nothing. If only he could tell her that. Everyone forgets names—it's the memory of being with someone that can't be found again.

Steve leans back against the cushions to study the ceiling as the quiet rolls by.

"Slowly." He begins. Then he stops. "Every passing day." His eyes close. "I can't remember much about him, either."

Steve can sense that she's pulling up tighter without even looking at her. It's like some thin red string is being tied around his tongue, forcing him not leave it at this, but he doesn't know what to say—but she's tugging, tugging, tugging at him to try by just breathing. Carefully, he sets the mug down and twists it around until the happily, bumbling snow-man is winking at them both from beyond dark, round eyes.

He turns to face her, pulls up his own knee onto the couch and focuses on not sweating through his existence. Clumsily, he extends his arms out to her.

All this time Beth eyes him with a perplexing scowl. "Steve?"

And then he moves, gingerly, across the short distance to wrap his arms around her. He's perfectly aware of his strength this time as his fingers close over her upper arms. She could weigh less than a 4th of a sack of potatoes, he can't even tell—but her hair smells like the blackberry stains that would paint his skin as a kid after he'd climb Mr. Flanagan's wooden fence and steal a handful from his shipping creates.

Beth finds herself suddenly pulled against Steve's chest, dense and warm, without even a second thought. The loose, soft layers of her pyjamas twist up around her knees—she's nearly in his lap. Quickly she throws out her arms to wrap around his neck and settles against him. It's familiar from the last time she's held him, but there is a pleasant hum from him that she can feel tingle down to her toes when he carefully leans against the side of her neck. His mouth moves quickly, and she can feel the tiny scratch of his stubble against her dry skin.

"…I'm sorry," Steve says, but he keeps his arms around her. "I promise I'm not usually so awkward about this." A sharp pause. "Well. Actually. That'd be a lie. But I'll uh, ask, next time?"

"This is fine," She sniffles a laugh. She hugs him tighter. "Were you cold? You could've asked for a hug."

He closes his eyes again, warm against her body. He actually feels way too warm, but he wouldn't give this up for anything. "'M not really good at telling people what I want."

"I've noticed," she remarks gently, a fingers lightly trailing through the slight dampness of his hair. She can easily conjure up the image of Steve breaking apart two nights before at the very idea of saying no to an electric blanket. "But I like surprises."

His eyes snap open at the skip of his heartbeat.

She moves away, just an inch, to peer into his dark blue eyes. "Do you like surprises?"

His jaw. It's like a rusted hinge that he prys open. "Used to," he creaks.

She giggles and holds him closer, snugging into his neck. Her hair, tangled and wild, is still unbelievably soft to him.

"Steve," her breath tickles from under his chin. "You're really hot."

He stills, trying not to blush, because his face is red enough as it is. Natasha had to explain, in her own blunt way, that many of Steve's adjectives that were used to describe attractive people had gravely outdated—mainly for the worse. He blushes deeper.

A hand flashes to cover his forehead. "—Like, really, really warm. Medicine, pronto."

Oh.

She's off towards her bathroom before Steve can protest otherwise, leaving his arms loosely defeated in his lap. He practices not mugging about having to swallow awful tasting gunk that wouldn't help him anyhow—he certainly can't not accept it.

From the edge beyond where her television sits, Steve focuses his hearing to a fine tune the music that's being played—the soldier can even hear the fine scratches of an old film being filtered back into use from the player. He doesn't recognize the song, but the lyrics are instantly not the cheerful tunes he's heard since the beginning of November.

I'll have a blue. . .Christmas. . .without you. I'll be so. . . blue. . .just thinking. . .about you. Decorations. . .of. .red. . .on. . .a. green Christmas tree. . .just won't be. . .the same dear. . .without you here with me. . .

Instantly Beth prances frantically through the room, sliding to her knees to stop the tape at once. "No, no, nope, not happening, no!"

Steve watches her in misunderstanding. "It wasn't so bad! What's wrong?"

"Elvis." She responds simply. From the floor, she does a strange swing of her hips that makes Steve suddenly wish he hadn't of asked, as he literally got a view of her shimming hips in form fitting pyjamas. The candy canes do not help. "This song and Elvis is what's wrong."

Steve practices the words on his tongue. "El vis?"

"Mhmm," Beth adds, distractedly. "This damnable song. They play it too much. It always just makes me so upset. I hate that it does that."

It's Steve's turn to tilt his head. "Isn't that Spanish?"

Her back is to him. Shoulders slightly up. Her head slowly turns to look at him like she's from a Warner Brothers cartoon. "…Spanish?"

"El Vis?" Steve asks. "I don't…follow?"

She slides around, smooth fabric over the carpet. "Elvis?"

"Oh! It's one word? Elvis?" Steve laughs. "Okay."

"No." She holds up a hand towards him, and he subdues. "I—wait. You just…Spanish?"

"I don't care for the radio." Steve defends breezily. "I have no idea what's new."

Her frozen look doesn't fade, and a strange chill goes up Steve's spine. That didn't fix anything.

"Steve, Elvis has been dead for, like, 40 years."

What. Steve can feel sweat beaming down his cheeks, and it's no longer from his fever. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

"I—I was just teasing you!" Steve suddenly chokes. "Of course he's been dead for 40 years. I mean—who doesn't know Elvis, right?"

Beth continues to stare. "Well, he is 'The King of Rock and Roll'."

"Right." His mind jumps to all he possibly knows of rock and roll music, and it's most made of his own sounds of general contempt for Clint, Natasha, Pepper and Tony's music. It's too loud, and ridiculous, and did he mention loud?

"Uh." She blinks. Slowly, she gets to her knees, and then to her feet. "Your fever felt pretty bad. Medicine. Right. I'm such a scatterbrain. Okay. I'll be back."

As discreetly as he can, Steve digs through his smart phone, needing less than one try to open up the Internet and type in Elvis. He taps on the first video that sees.

Upon viewing "The King"'s picture, Steve realises he could smell his hair gel just from looking at him. He continues a quick history search from the video's comments—there are people talking about concerts from 1955. Steve blanches at the dates. Turning off the volume, Steve watches the video.

His mind is somewhere between shocked and unimpressed. His own opinions are too conflicted by what he feels, and what he's already seen by 2013. Firstly he's hit with: They'd allowed his hips to move like that?! Back then?! On Television?! Quickly followed by how much worse he's been subjected to. Steve had already been forced, (for learning purposes, smirked Tony and laughed Clint) to see far, far worse. But really. The singer's whole identity was just…completely wild. And if it had anything to do with the loud, straining garbage that was "Rock and Roll", Tony's t-shirts, and Pepper's intense, album collection that took up a whole room in Stark Tower, Steve's almost glad he missed it.

She's back, full measuring cup in hand coloured a sickly purple, which Steve reluctantly takes like a champ. At least it tastes like grape this time.

He clears his throat carefully. "Thank you," he says softly. "I'm sure I'll cool off soon. I'm sorry. It just…it just hit me how I could be spreadin' this around to you."

"It's okay," Beth says quickly. She thinks about his confession before with carrying around an illness. "I haven't been sick in a while. I could use a sick day."

"So," he thumbs back towards the stereo. "You don't like that song?"

"'Blue Christmas'?" Beth perks at his question. Then she deflates. "No."

"Yeah. I think you mentioned it before. Might I ask why?"

Her button nose wrinkles. Then she pouts for a second. Finally, she decides on her answer. "I'll keep my secrets, Soldier Steve. It's all I've got to play close to my chest with you and your secrets."

Steve cracks a smile. "Fair enough."

Along the table Steve drifts his gaze. There's a similar box seated along it. Square, with a tape inside—and a flashing red button. Back at his apartment he could tell it belonged, somehow, to wireless home phone cable. Perhaps that same voice mail box, like from Beth's cellphone?

"New message?" Steve risks the question, but he has to make up for Elvis.

Beth's entire face seems to grow very pale at the machine. Instantly her hand reaches out and over one of the many square buttons as if to block Steve from seeing it. "Yeah. But—I've already checked. It's just Ronda."

"Ah," Steve nods. "Well, I hope she's well."

"She is." Beth says stiffly. It takes all of Steve's manners to not flat out ask her what the deal is. "She hopes you're feeling better. And is waiting for you to sue her about your side."

Steve chuckles lowly, even though it hurts. "Does she know about you meeting Natasha and the rest of the gals?"

"Um," She pauses. Steve waits for the answer, but there's a strange edge when it finally arrives. "Yes."

Okay. That has to go. Steve thinks. Slowly he moves his own hand towards the box—and for a moment, Beth's eyes go wide and it seems as if she's going to tell him to stop—but their fingers touch, and Steve just pulls her hand away ever so slightly from the reel-to-reel of the tape inside.

"Hey—" he gathers her blue eyes towards his. He reaches up to pull at the collar of his sweater. "It's too hot in here. You wanna go take a walk, get some breakfast?"

Carefully, she smiles one of her classic small smiles. "Okay."

Steve keeps her hand wrapped in his, fingers intertwined. "Let's go, then."

He gives a slight pull forward, but Beth stays where she is. He looks at her questioningly.

She smiles wider. "How about I change into normal clothes?" She uses his hand and places it along her own side. "I don't think this is the latest style on the below zero avenue. What do you think?"

Steve's fingers inch inwards, folding the soft, velvet of her shirt till he actually has her side between his fingers—the warmth is a rush to his face. "Uhm—" he stammers. His heart ticks like a dying kick to a motorcycle, threating to not start. "You know my opinions on your candy canes. They're lovely."

She laughs, and the tension breaks as she eyes him shyly from under her eyelashes.

"And do you even have a jacket this time?" She looks him over suspiciously. Along the armchair pushed over by the door, she points towards a grey jacket lapping over the back. "If not, you can take that one."

"I have one," Steve answers her firmly, contemplating leaning down so they're eye to eye. "Will that be all, Miss Ore?"

She's up on her tiptoes and steals a kiss to the tip of his nose. "Now it will."


AN: What are you hiding there, Beth? You don't seem the type…

COMING TO A COMPUTER SCREEN NEAR YOU: A TWIST IN THE PLOT. OR MAYBE IT'S SOMETHING REALLY OBVIOUS. BUT AT LEAST THERE'S A CHASE SCENE.