Apologies in advance for the lack of Bucky in this chapter.
On Alice's seventeenth birthday, Steve got in a fight.
They'd been out at the same soda fountain they'd been going to for years, the three of them plus some of their other friends from school. Then a group of older boys on the other side of the shop began calling awful things towards the girls in the birthday party group, Steve got to his feet, and the rest was history.
The party broke up with Steve and the older boys being kicked out, Bucky chasing off the older boys, and Alice's other guests leaving. Alice stayed in the soda fountain for a few more minutes – a few of the boys had left their wallets behind so she handed their ID cards to the soda fountain owner so he could kick them out if they showed up again, stole just enough money to cover her tab, then dropped the wallets in the trash. She'd also memorized their addresses in case she ever ended up in the area and felt like having a chat with their mothers about how they spoke to women.
She walked out into the night air to see Steve sitting on the curb holding a handkerchief to his nose while Bucky stood over him, lecturing.
"– could've just spoken to the owner, Steve, this is Alice's birthday! You didn't have to–"
"He heard 'em, he wasn't doing anything about it!" Steve retorted. His voice came out muffled by blood. There must have been more fighting outside. "And I didn't even start it–"
"You went over there and told them to shut the hell up, what did you think would happen?"
Alice cleared her throat as she approached them and they both fell silent, glancing over with worried eyes. The streetlight fell on Steve's face, revealing a very bloody nose, a cut over his eyebrow, and a graze running up his forearm. Alice winced. His eyes were alight with leftover adrenaline.
"Sorry, Alice," he said miserably. Bucky crossed his arms and looked to be close to tutting.
Alice waved a hand. "Don't worry about it. I'm glad you stopped them, though I wish you hadn't done it with your face." She gestured to his injuries. "You look terrible."
"Thanks. I got in a few good hits."
"I must've missed that in between you getting your ass kicked," Bucky huffed. He checked his watch. "Damn it all to hell."
"You've got to get back to your sisters, right?" Alice said. Bucky's parents were travelling tonight and he had to be back to watch his sisters.
"I do." Bucky looked down at Steve. "But I can't let you walk back home like this, your ma will kill you then me."
Steve pulled the handkerchief away from his nose and winced. "You go, I'll get cleaned up somewhere on the way."
"Maybe I'll toss you in the river, see if that cleans out the rot between your ears," Bucky muttered.
"Then he'd get sick and you'd feel terrible," Alice cut in, half-smiling. "My place is just down the block, I'll take Steve and clean him up in the tailor shop."
Steve looked up. "You don't have to–"
"You hear that, Steve?" Bucky said, gesturing to Alice. "Now you have to be brought into the tailor shop like an old coat in need of darning. Like a boot–"
"I get it," Steve rolled his eyes. "I'll see ya tomorrow, Bucky. Say hi to your sisters for me."
"We'll see." Bucky turned to Alice and scooped her in for a hug. "Happy birthday, Al. Sorry we mucked it up."
"I don't see any mucking up here," she said warmly. "Here I thought I was going to have a boring birthday."
Bucky walked off into the darkness with a sigh for Steve and a wink for Alice.
Alice put her hands on her hips and looked down at Steve. He made a sorry picture on the curbside; he had blood on his nice shirt and his eyebrow was swelling up so he looked strangely quizzical. His arms were rising with goosebumps in the cool breeze.
"Are you okay?"
He glanced up from where he'd been looking at his bloody handkerchief. "Me? I'm fine."
She raised an eyebrow.
He just looked back at her, attempting to copy that guileless expression that got Alice out of so many scrapes.
She jerked her head. "C'mon."
They got a few looks from passersby as they walked down the block to the tailor shop, Alice moving slower to keep pace with the bloody, slightly-limping Steve. When Alice pulled out the keys for the shop an old lady walking past told her:
"You take care of your little brother now, young miss."
Steve's head dropped between his shoulders and his cheeks burned. Alice just hid a smile and nodded to the old woman.
Alice opened the door, revealing the tailor shop with the lights off and cloth over the desk and displays. "In you go. Careful not to bleed on anything."
She followed Steve through to the supply room, which they both knew like the backs of their hands by now, and Steve sank gratefully into his usual wooden chair in the corner as Alice rushed upstairs to fetch supplies. When she came back Steve hadn't moved aside from leaning his head against the back of the chair. That fight must have taken it out of him.
His head rose again at the sound of her setting down towels and a basin of warm water on the workbench. She'd learned how to do this since Matthias got hurt; she'd read a couple of nursing textbooks and had been picking up tips from Steve's mom whenever she came over to visit.
"I'm sorry," Steve murmured.
Alice dipped one of the towels in the water, turned to Steve, and slopped it gracelessly onto his face. He let out a muffled laugh and blinked up at her through watery eyelashes when she drew the towel away.
She smiled. "You don't need to be sorry." She re-dipped the towel and wrung it out, turning the water pink, then turned back to Steve and started cleaning the blood away more carefully. His nose had stopped bleeding, though it looked tender, and the eyebrow cut was still seeping lightly. She gave Steve a wad of gauze and told him to press down on it. While he did that, she started washing gravel out of his forearm cut. A moth fluttered around the orange light above them.
Alice worked in silence for a few moments, her mind on hygiene and the drip-dripping of the wet towel and how she'd have to find Steve a spare shirt to walk home in. She didn't notice Steve's mood darken.
"It's not that I'm mindless," he said into the silence. She glanced at his face and saw him staring into the middle distance. "I don't get into fights because I like fighting. I hope I'm not… not like them."
"You're not," she reassured. "I know why you do it. I just wish you'd look into other options first." She dabbed the cut with a mercurochrome swab, making him wince, then started swaddling his arm in a bandage. Her eyes flickered to his face. "But I think you do like it, a little bit."
Steve stiffened and looked away.
Alice smiled. "It's okay." He cautiously loosened again and looked up at her with curious eyes as she ripped a piece of adhesive tape with her teeth and secured the bandage. "I think I understand it. It feels good to be doing something, to strike out against the terrible things in the world with everything you've got." She shrugged and moved to his eyebrow cut. "I guess I just don't get the luxury of that a lot."
"Dunno if this counts as luxury." Steve winced as she pulled away the gauze.
"Well if nothing else, you're persistent. Anyone else would've given up on fighting back by now."
"Can't do that–"
"I know, I know." She turned to drop the bloody gauze on the table and pick up another swab, and as she did she perfectly mimicked Steve's voice: "Start running, you'll never stop." She smiled and shook her head at him. Steve always felt a bit unnerved when she did that, but it did make him smile. "I'm not running either, Steve."
"You never do, do you," he said thoughtfully. She swabbed his forehead cut and he winced again.
"I just hide," she said, with a bite of resentment toward herself.
"You don't hide," he protested. "It's not hiding. You… what d'you call it when those big cats hide in the grass and wait to spring? Or when birds of prey hide behind the clouds?"
"I think you call it hiding," she said with a smile, but her fingers slowed as they cleaned Steve's forehead. His earnestness always took her by surprise – she'd never known someone so honest where it counted, so determined to do right. She found herself struck by what he'd said.
"Mm," Steve said, thinking. He smelled like blood and soap, and the combination tickled Alice's nose. "Gotta be a better word. Because that's what you do."
She angled over him to pinch the cut together and tape it, looking down at him. "You think I'm a bird of prey, Steve?"
He looked up at her. She saw the lump in his throat bob. "A little bit, yes."
Her lips spread in a grin. "I'll take that as a compliment."
"You should."
The workroom door opened then, revealing Matthias in just his trousers, shirt, and socks. He glanced at the two of them, made a face at the bloody gauze on the workbench, then said: "I'll go find some raw meat for your face," and walked out again.
Alice laughed at the embarrassed expression on Steve's face.
Excerpt from New York Times interview with Sergeant Timothy Alloysius Cadwaller "Dum Dum" Dugan, 1978:
"Sarge was always telling us about the scrapes Cap used to get into when he was a scrawny kid," Dugan remembers with a hearty laugh. "Always told us that he'd never have made it to twenty if it weren't for having someone there to patch him up – poor old Sarge, usually, or… or his ma." Dugan shakes his head, bemused. "I can believe it, too. The only reason Cap didn't get torn to shreds in the war was because they pumped him full of super juice and gave him an impenetrable shield. He never changed up here." Dugan taps his forehead and gives me a wink.
Their final year of school began in September, and Alice and Steve were thrown back into study. The New York Passenger Ship Terminal construction was finished, so Bucky started moving cargo at the Red Hook docks. He was back in the neighborhood, so sometimes Alice and Steve walked to the docks to meet up with him at the ends of his shifts.
However, Bucky started coming along on their outings less and less. He said it was because he was busy with work, but he still met up with them individually and Alice could sense a lie. She was too afraid of what the lie could be to call him out on it.
It wasn't like it was a great burden to her to spend time alone with Steve. At some point over the past few years he had become indispensable to her – when she was excited about something, it didn't feel real until she'd shared it with him. She worked hard for his small half-smile or even rarer, his laugh, and felt a disproportionate amount of joy when she achieved it. He always had such a heavy aura of seriousness about him – shifting it aside to get to the secretly funny person beneath was an ongoing mission of hers.
They didn't usually have enough money to do anything really, so mostly they just walked around, exploring Brooklyn and getting into scrapes. They liked the park, and the museums and art galleries since they were free. They talked about the places they would go: the Smithsonian in D.C., the Louvre in Paris, distant shores and beautiful cities. Art lived inside both of them and spooled out in reams of imagination, making the bustling streets of Brooklyn seem somehow more than they were.
Alice showed up with tea and books whenever Steve was sick, and helped his mom without being asked. She came over to fix their radio when it started going crackly (turned out the tubes needed realigning) and actually blushed when Steve's mom kissed her on the head in thanks.
Alice wrote him songs, usually joke songs. The first was "Get Well Steve", which was all about the wonderful stuff waiting for him outside ("You'll miss the pigeons fighting the rats behind the bakery," she sang to his spluttering laughter), but also about how he needed to take time to get better. Another of her songs chronicled his many fights like the bard legends of old. But she also shared her more serious compositions – the ones about her wonderment in watching her brother grow up, about how the stars looked on clear nights from the roof of her tenement, about running down a street behind her friends with sea salt in the air.
Steve drew for her. He'd always been sketching, jotting down the likeness of the world around him, but this felt different. This felt like an exchange of pieces of their minds, an exchange of promises. He drew her the Brooklyn Bridge and the leathery faces they came across at the docks in Red Hook. For her joke songs he drew her joke-images: Bucky as a nurse maid telling off toddler-versions of Alice and Steve; Alice as a soldier with a helmet on her head and a grim look of determination on her face; Alice as a bird perched on a church pew.
He drew her imagined landscapes of rolling hills and exotic plants, and adventure scenes of soldiers running along rooftops and the tops of trains. For his birthday Alice had given him a journal, but he filled it mostly with images from each day, rather than words. She liked looking at it to understand how he saw the day so differently. She experienced the world through sound: voices and song and the clatter-bang of everyday life, but Steve caught the fleeting images and moments that most people forgot in the blink of an eye.
He showed her only a quarter of the sketches he'd done of her.
When Steve was alone with Bucky he confided that he felt as if he were hurtling somewhere very fast on a train, but the blurred images through the windows looked like dredging treacle. Things were changing between he and Alice, he could sense it, but he had no idea how it would all turn out.
"Stop waiting for something to happen," Bucky advised. "You're not stuck on a train, you're driving it."
Steve, who no one could accuse of being a coward, hunched his shoulders up to his ears and pretended he couldn't hear.
Alice confided in no one that her feelings toward Steve were rapidly twisting, cresting, like a leaf snatched up in a storm about to be flung above the clouds. She barely allowed herself to acknowledge it. But she could not deny that even when she wasn't with him, Steve dominated her thoughts. When they were together she simultaneously wanted to lean in close and flee as fast as she could. He made her feel less closed off, more free to feel and be and create. He felt like fizzing soda in her stomach, like the calm of a song.
Bucky wrote them both off as hopeless and left them space to figure things out. He wasn't one to sit around not acting on his feelings.
Alice was drawn to Steve's side every day. When winter crept over Brooklyn and made the streets shiver they tried to stay inside more often; usually in Steve's house with or without his mom, or in the back of the tailor shop. When they scratched together some money they went to the cinema, splurged on food at the soda fountain, or went to Coney Island with Bucky.
When they were younger they never spent this much time together. It got to the point that if Alice stayed at home Tom would wander out and ask "Where's Steve?", glancing around as if he might spot a pair of narrow, angular shoulders somewhere in the flat. More often than not the answer was "He's on his way," and Tom would smile his toothy smile.
Thanksgiving came around, and Steve's mom was scheduled to work on the evening of the holiday. Bucky and his family were going out to their relatives in Long Island for the weekend. Bucky offered for Steve to join them – as long as you don't fight my uncle, punk – but then Alice quietly invited him to come to the family gathering at her house.
Steve and Bucky exchanged a glance, then Steve turned back to Alice and said: "Yes. Please. If that's okay. Thank you." He wanted to shake himself but he needed to be not weird.
Alice smiled. "It's okay."
When the day came Steve found himself on the stoop outside the Moser-Johnson tenement building in his best (and only) suit, clutching a metal pot full of buttered peas he'd made with his mom's help. There was a chill in the air and the sky was dimming. Steve shifted where he stood, checked his barely-working watch, tucked his hair back into place.
He shook his head at himself. He knew this place. He'd spent five summers in the tailor shop and its back room, he'd even been up in the house half a dozen times, but this felt different.
Finally, the door opened.
Steve had fainted a couple of times in his life, and the sudden tingly head-rush he felt when Alice appeared from behind the dark tenement door made him worried for a moment. She grinned out at him as if she'd been wishing that he'd be behind the door and was overjoyed that the wish had come true.
She wore a green collared dress cinched around her waist with a brown belt and her blonde hair hung in short ringlets. A fresh gleam glittered in her eyes. Steve swallowed and realized his throat was dry.
"You got here early," she said, composing her grin into her usual calm façade.
Twenty minutes early, just in case. Steve looked at his watch. "Did I? I guess I-"
"Come in," she said with a smile in her voice. Steve could only obey.
They walked slowly up the too-narrow stairs with their shoulders bumping against each other, and Steve asked about Alice's recent performance at a dance hall. She'd told him about it over the radio, but using morse code made their conversations clipped and stilted – he liked to hear her voice.
Alice pushed the apartment door open with one hand while using the other to illustrate the size of the dance hall, and Steve stepped inside just as Matthias came to grab the door.
"Steve!" Matthias exclaimed, spreading his arms wide. He had a spot of what looked like gravy on the corner of his collar, and his smile was just as wide and welcoming as ever. Steve had liked Matthias the first time he ever saw him, though he hadn't found out for weeks that he was Alice's stepfather. Matthias was one of those personalities who brightened the people around him; a genuinely cheerful man, and he'd never had a harsh word for Steve even though Steve had been occupying more and more of Alice's attention and time.
Matthias came over to whisk the pot out of Steve's hands and cracked the lid open. "Peas! Thank you, Steve, you didn't have to do that. Did you cook these?"
"With some help," Steve admitted. He glanced over his shoulder at Alice, who nodded encouragingly and then followed him into the apartment.
Steve trailed Matthias across the apartment to the dining table and took in the room around him: it wasn't as full as the time they'd held that party to celebrate Alice's first radio experience, but it was still packed with people. He recognized Matthias's family, some people from church, and a few women who must have been Alice's mom's friends. Alice and her mom didn't have any family in New York, so Matthias's relatives made up the bulk of the numbers.
People nodded and smiled at Steve as he followed Matthias to the table. The radio warbled songs into the room, flowing under the current of conversations and laughter, and amber liquid gleamed in glasses. It seemed he and Alice were the only teenagers.
"Guten Abend, Steve!" Alice's mom called as she whirled past with a tray of cookies. He opened his mouth to reply but she'd already leaned over the couch to offer the biscuits to Matthias's sister and her husband.
"Here we are," Matthias said, and Steve looked over his shoulder to see him place the peas in pride of place on the dinner table.
The table was a mouthwatering sight. There was what looked like a small turkey under tinfoil (Steve got it, his mom could never afford a large turkey on Thanksgiving either), surrounded with plenty more dishes to make up for it: mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, asparagus, pies. From all the tinfoil and different dishes it seemed everyone had brought a few dishes to share.
Matthias took in Steve's hungry eyes and laughed. "Settle down, Rogers, we're sitting down to eat in just a second."
Steve hesitated, waiting for the dig about his size, but it didn't come. Matthias just clapped him on the shoulder and then went to wrangle Tom. Steve let out a breath.
"You okay?" Alice asked from behind his shoulder. He turned to her and she shrugged. "I know they can be… a lot."
He followed her gaze around the room: children underfoot, gabbing aunties, loud laughter. He shook his head. There would always be a part of him that envied Bucky and Alice for their big families. He wished his mom could be here – too often it was just the two of them, and she worked so hard to support them. She deserved to spend a night surrounded by love like this. Next year.
He turned to Alice. "I'm okay." He glanced around. "How can I help out? Does anything need… carrying?"
She watched his face with a smile playing at her lips. Eventually she tipped her head. "Mom asked me to start 'die Schafe hüten'. Means herding the-"
"Sheep," Steve finished. Alice's eyes widened a little and he smiled. "I remember that one."
"Gut gemacht," [Well done] she replied, then jerked her head for him to follow.
They circled the room politely asking people to please head for the table, and were mostly obeyed. Tom soon figured out that Steve was in the room and ran for the blonde boy who listened to him seriously and drew pretty drawings, and could not be convinced to let him go. The frizz-haired boy escorted Steve around by the hand until everyone had taken their seats at the table.
At the table, Matthias and Marie shared the role of host. The food smelled delicious and Steve could hear more than his own stomach grumbling.
"Thank you for coming, everyone," Alice's mom said with a smile that matched her daughter's. "Let's say grace."
Steve realized that he was sitting between Alice and Tom. Tom was already clutching his hand in a sweaty grip, but for a moment he and Alice looked at each other, hesitant. They'd spent years in each other's company, but they didn't often touch. Steve still remembered her light grip on his elbow at the dance in summer break.
Alice placed her hand on the table between their plates, palm-up. Everyone else at the table was already holding hands, so Steve laid his hand over Alice's without another moment's thought. Their fingers linked. She had clever typist's fingers, the brush of her fingertips over the back of his hand sent a shiver down his spine.
Matthias said grace – amen, murmured Steve – and then hands unlinked all over the table to dig into the food. Steve felt reluctant to draw his fingers away from Alice's; the moment seemed to lag like treacle, skin slipping against skin and then emptiness. Steve didn't look at her.
The food was just as delicious as it smelled. Alice and Steve were each allowed a finger of brandy, trading a secret glinting glance at the comments about their 'first drink', and Matthias's family supplied endless sources of side-splitting and often bizarre conversation. They were a colorful family full of jibes and strong opinions and a veritable treasure-trove of musical knowledge.
They quizzed Steve about his family and his home and what he thought about Roosevelt, and Alice defended him when he got too flustered by distracting them with an offhand comment that would have them all up in an excitable uproar. Tom just laughed to see his family interrogating Steve like he was a spy. Matthias's sister Molly declared Steve a "genuine sweetheart," and he blushed to the tips of his ears. Tom's granny just peered through her glasses at him like he might try to poison them all and didn't say a word.
Matthias managed to reel in the conversation just long enough to get them all to say something they were thankful for. It was all a mix of sweet and bemusing – they were thankful for safety and snickers bars and their family, for Fred Astaire's dancing feet and for having enough money to put dinner on the table every night.
One of the ladies from church had her turn, smiling at her children, and then it was Alice's turn. She looked around warmly.
"I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful that we've got our home, and enough to eat. I'm thankful for my friends."
Her eyes fell on Steve, softer than usual. After a few moments he realized she wasn't just looking at him, she was waiting for him to talk. He started nervously and looked around to see Matthias and Alice's mom trading an amused glance.
What am I thankful for? He asked himself. Not the Dodgers, he thought distractedly. They'd lost again.
He swallowed and looked up. "I, uh, I'm thankful that all of you invited me here, it was real nice of you and I appreciate it. I'm thankful for my mom, and Bucky, a-and Alice." He stopped there. He didn't look at her because doing so right then felt dangerous – a prickle on the side of his neck.
The attention slid away from Steve to Tom, and Steve let out a breath.
Tom cleared his throat importantly and exclaimed: "I'm thankful for pumpkin pie!"
The next month passed in a daze of studying in freezing classrooms, and sideways glances. Bucky went on a few dates with a girl called Lacey and Alice remained friends with her after they broke up, much to Bucky's consternation.
On Christmas afternoon the three of them met up at Steve's house, where his mom welcomed them with eggnog and leftover ham. They sat in the living room to trade presents.
Bucky gifted them both warm hats (which Alice suspected his sisters had made), and made both of them wear the hats inside because he claimed they looked cold. Alice gave Bucky a Vargas girls calendar, which made Steve blush and Bucky roar with laughter so loud that Steve's mom came into the room and then rolled her eyes. Steve got Bucky a novel he'd been asking for.
Steve's gift to Alice was a drawing. She pulled it out of its tissue paper sleeve with gentle fingers, and took a few moments to absorb it. It was a portrait of her: she stood in the center of New York City where the Empire State should be, standing tall over the buildings with a microphone stand before her. And the entire city curved towards her like she was the heart of it. She eyed the fine shading against the curve of her cheek, the detail of her fingers on the microphone stand.
Alice wasn't sure what the drawing meant, but it made her heart thud. "Thank you," she murmured. He waved her off with pink cheeks.
Alice's small package for Steve contained a compass.
"I could tell you something sweet and stupid about how I hope you always end up going in the right direction," she said thoughtfully as he opened it. "But truthfully, I'm worried you'll get yourself lost the minute you leave New York."
"You think I'm going to leave New York?" he asked half-laughingly. He picked up the compass and examined it; it was a simple lensatic bronze one which she'd bought at an army surplus store. The needle shivered as he lifted it.
"You will one day," she said confidently. "As a soldier or by some other way, you will. You're not meant to be here forever."
He felt almost unnerved by that, but it gave him hope. He weighed the compass in his hand. "Then I better hang onto this." He pocketed it. "Thank you, Alice."
They leaned across the carpet to hug each other one-armed, and Bucky watched them with a raised eyebrow.
Comment Section on Buzzfeed article 'Captain America's newly-released early recruitment report has the internet scratching its head at how he's alive' (2013):
- My only question is? How?
- Ah, I understand what his problem was now – his everything was sick.
- Seems kind of skeevy to publish a living guy's medical history.
- Jeez, scarlet fever AND rheumatic fever. Those were no joke back in the 30s. I'd worry that he'd be bringing old superbugs into the future, but given the super serum he's probably healthier than any of us.
- 'Nervous trouble of any sort'? If I had a list of health issues that long you can bet I'd be nervous too!
January was all vapor-breaths and crunching through snow to school and shivering in poorly heated classrooms. A tickle in Alice's throat turned into a croak and she had to cancel some of her performances. She lay wadded in bed, reading through her old copies of Nancy Drew and tapping out Morse code to Steve on the radio. Tom brought her steaming cups of tea and let her hug him for warmth.
After a few weeks the croak in Alice's throat turned into a full-blown cold, and as if in competition Steve came down with a shivery flu. Bucky was still working down at the docks in the biting snow, but in his off days he went from one house to the other with sweets and a terrible joke guaranteed to make an invalid laugh.
On Saturday afternoon after days of being stuck at home Alice stubbornly pulled on her coat and boots, wrapped a scarf around her neck, and headed for the door.
"Where do you think you're going, schemer?" Matthias called from the kitchen.
"I'm feeling better, I'm going to go to Steve's."
Her mom walked out of the bedroom with Tom and cast an assessing eye over her. "Du siehst müde aus, Liebling." [You look tired, darling] "Why don't you stay and rest?"
"I'm not tired, mama-"
"Then why not come with us? Father Rickard lent us his car, we're going to drop Tom with Molly in Harlem then go to White Plains to see after that sewing machine." Tom's thirty-year old machine had broken down last week. Alice's mom came over to stroke Alice's hair away from her face. "I don't like the idea of you walking around in the cold."
"Seconded," said Matthias as he hoisted Tom up onto his hip. Tom already looked sleepy.
Alice shook her head. "I'm fine, I think the fresh air will help."
They parted ways at the bottom of the stairwell and Alice began battling up the three blocks in the freezing wind to Steve and his mom's tenement. The fresh air did not help – it seemed to cut right through her, chilling her bones, so by the time she knocked on the Rogers' door she was shaking so hard that her teeth clacked together.
Steve's mom opened the door. "Oh good heavens," she said, resigned and not entirely surprised, and hauled Alice inside.
It was blessedly warm inside the apartment. After toeing off her boots Alice allowed herself to be bustled into the living room where Steve sat swaddled in blankets on the sofa, bleary-eyed and red nosed. His eyes widened when he saw their visitor, though he didn't think to speak as she dropped into the rocking chair adjacent to the sofa and sneezed loudly.
"Do your parents know you're here?" Steve's mom called as she bustled into the kitchen. Alice noted that she wore her nurse uniform, and from the bag at the door she supposed she'd just been on her way out.
"Yes." Steve's mom put a blanket on her lap, so she unfolded and pulled it up over herself. Ahhh. "I don't mean to be a bother, I can head back home if–"
"No," Steve croaked at the same time as his mom said: "I wouldn't hear of it."
She emerged from the kitchen with a steaming mug and pressed it into Alice's hands. "Here." She put a palm to Alice's head. "This is that tea you brought us, you look like you're in need of it. Stay here, don't move, and don't go home until you feel absolutely, positively well. I'll see if I can have your parents come pick you up."
"Thank you Mrs Rogers," Alice murmured. The warmth from the tea seeped into her palms. It smelled like lemon and herbs.
"I've said you can call me Sarah," the older woman said gently, then pulled away. "Steve, remember to take your medicine at five. I'll see you later sweetheart." With that she pulled her bag over her shoulder, fixed her cap, and then headed out of the apartment.
Alice and Steve glanced at each other. The clock on the mantelpiece dinged softly, and the distant sounds of cars rumbling and far off-construction trickled in. The Rogers' apartment was just as small and homey as ever, with the same faded furniture and the portrait of Mr Rogers on the wall. Alice loved this place. She still remembered the first time she'd been, when she'd felt so curious about everything she saw. But now she knew the titles of the books in the small bookshelf in the corner, she knew where to find the teaspoons, she knew the whole sad story behind the portrait on the wall.
Alice turned itchy eyes back to Steve. He watched her, looking sick out of his mind from the flu. His hair was all scraggly and uncombed over his head, and his sharp chin jutted out from over the top of his blanket.
"So how are you doing?" she asked to break the silence.
He closed his eyes when he laughed. "I'm fine. You didn't have to come check on me, I've been worse."
"I know." Alice pulled her knees to her chest and the rocking chair swayed under her. The blanket Mrs Rogers had given her was brown and a bit scratchy, and smelled of Steve.
Steve wriggled closer on the sofa. "So why'd you come?"
She met his eyes. "Gotta keep an eye on you, Rogers." His eyebrows rose. "You're squirrelly."
"You're right," he said. "I might do somethin' stupid."
"Exactly."
"Like go out in the middle of winter by myself while I'm sick."
Alice's eyes narrowed as Steve's gleamed.
She sipped her tea slowly. "You're feeling brave today," she noted.
"I've had a lotta medicine."
She snorted into her tea and that got him laughing again. The two of them croaked and wheezed and coughed as they laughed, which just made them laugh more, and Alice felt her shivers fade away.
They bickered back and forth for a few minutes, and then Alice got up to turn on the radio. When she came back, the rocking chair felt treacherous as she tried to sit back down so she slowly slid to the floor instead. Steve laughed at her, then slid down from the couch as well. They were almost toe-to-toe, sitting on the floor like children.
One of her favorite songs came onto the radio and Alice tried to sing along, but her throat rasped and hurt and she had to give it up. Steve watched her with pale blue eyes.
So instead they talked. They knew each other so well by now that every topic felt familiar, but that didn't make it boring. They talked about the book they'd been reading in class and the Dodgers and how Bucky was working too hard and the broken sewing machine and about what it would be like for Steve to join the 107th one day. Alice looked away from Steve for a moment to take a sip of her tea, but then realized she'd let it go cold.
They traded tired jokes and laughed when they sneezed. Steve was a little more bold and talkative than normal, probably because of the fever and the medicine.
It felt normal. Alice realized that she didn't just feel like a guest here, sitting on the paisley patterned rug with Steve croaking a laugh across from her. It felt like a home. She had a flash-vision of herself coming through the front door and Steve's voice saying welcome home. The vision faded in a moment and she blinked away the afterimage.
Her cheeks had gone warm, she realized, and the room had gone silent once again.
Steve was looking at her. He'd never gotten that promised growth spurt and it wasn't likely he would – he was still half a head shorter than her, with ears that stuck out and clothes too big for him and a few strands of hair that he was constantly brushing away from his forehead. Alice always wanted to reach out and grab his fingers to stop him. She used to think it was because she was annoyed at the habit, but she wasn't so sure now.
Steve's eyes were always so serious, save for those rare moments she got to see when he was with Bucky or his mom, or her. They were serious again now, but not in the grim way they usually were.
Alice wondered how long they'd gone without talking. She wondered how much longer they could go like this, just staring at each other. She wasn't even sure what had been said last.
Steve drew in a breath and opened his mouth to blurt out: "Would it be alright if I kissed you?"
Alice's eyes widened and her stomach swooped. "Right now?"
He leaned forward, blankets rustling, as if to plant one on her, then swayed when he was halfway there and said: "I dunno if that's a good idea."
She smiled. Underneath her blanket, her toes curled. "I don't think so either."
Steve sat back and his face fell.
"Oh no, I don't mean at all!" she exclaimed, holding up a hand. "I mean, just now."
He looked up again. "Do you mean…"
Alice couldn't help but smile fondly at him; brave Steve Rogers who she hadn't been able to get out of her head since seventh grade. She leaned forward slightly. "Ask again when neither of us is sick, and you're sure you've got your head on straight. And I'll probably say yes."
His eyes shone. "Probably?"
"Well I might have eaten garlic, or not have brushed my teeth, or I might have been eating icecream and have a very cold mouth," she said, because she was nervous and excited and overtalking in a way she normally never did unless she was trying to distract someone.
"I wouldn't care," Steve said loudly. "I'd kiss you if you had shark teeth."
Alice grinned at him. "You are feeling brave today, Steve." His cheeks went pink, as if realizing just how loopy he was acting, and Alice shyly met his eyes. "For what it's worth, I'd kiss you if you had shark teeth too."
He smiled back at her, shy and pleased, and she added: "But I would be very careful about it."
When Alice walked home that evening (after making sure she felt well enough and giving Steve a quick, shy peck on the forehead), she understood what the singers meant when they sang over the moon.
Her feet felt light on the pavement she'd trudged over only hours before. Nerves and excitement zinged through her in a potent mix that she only ever felt around Steve, or before she sang: like buzzing wasps in her stomach.
The snow in Brooklyn had given way to a light drizzle. The light shone off the damp pavement and Alice felt alive. She'd find a way to sing this moment, if she could just discover the right words.
When she pushed open the door at home she hesitated on the doorstep a moment – it almost felt as if a cold wind had blown out from within, jarring against the elation of her spirits. She wondered if someone had left a window open inside. But she didn't feel cold.
She stepped inside.
Molly, Matthias's sister, looked up from where she sat on the couch. Tom was curled up into her with his face hidden against her shoulder, and tears gleamed on Molly's cheeks.
Alice froze.
"Where's mom and Matthias?" A neutral voice. Betraying nothing.
Molly shook her head. Alice already knew.
"They're dead, child," Molly breathed as she rocked Tom. "I'm so sorry."
~ Such short, tragic lives. ~
And thus begins some actual plot! There's just one more 'letters' chapter left.
I've never celebrated Thanksgiving in my life, so I hope this was at least mildly accurate. Also: 'Vargas girls' refers to an early form of pin-up model drawn by a guy called Joaquin Vargas. Before World War II the images were apparently more about women's beauty rather than sexuality, but I feel like Bucky would appreciate either.
Reviews:
Red Vixen: No worries lovely, of course I understand being stressed about finals! I hope they went okay? So you should be in Romania now, hooray! Give Wyvern a head boop for me :) And her baby Wyverns, if they've arrived! I'm glad you're enjoying, I promise we're almost at "the" part of the story :) Just saw your second review too, thanks so much :)