Steve shook the rain off his hat and brushed water from his jacket shoulders as he walked through the doors of the library, feeling a little guilty about dripping water on the marble floors.

It had been more than a few days since his last summons from Secretary Ross to appear at a Raft transport location so he was certain one was imminent. He felt drawn to the old library with its solemn lions guarding the front doors, reminded by a lingering memory that he should pick up a new set of books to distract Mrs. Ellis.

Steve quietly asked the circulating librarian for book suggestions and was sent on his way with a shortlist of recommendations. Rain thundered against the ceiling, echoing ominously through the cavernous study hall. Steve took the elevator into the depths of the library's lower levels, relieved that the loud and insistent cacophony was greatly lessened by depth.

The library seemed to be a popular refuge in the rain. All of the open seats were taken, and the aisles slightly more crowded. People had taken their children and shopping in from the deluge outdoors, and the collection of both led to a series of excited shrieks and shushing parents, inevitably leading to quiet whimpers and tired meltdowns.

Steve found his books with relative ease; he was starting to get his bearings in this place after a limited number of visits. Confirmation of titles was interrupted as a peal of tinkling childish laughter bounced through the next aisle.

Small feet and broad wheels skimmed past the edge of the aisle, banking a hard right and the childish shrieking continued, even as the older rider tried with her own giggles to keep the child's enthusiasm in check.

Peering through books, Steve saw a familiar face driving stealthily through the books, chasing after a small toddler, whispering 'I'm gonna get you!'. Playing tag with a toddler in a library, both received fairly nasty looks and amused smiles in equal measure. Steve leaned on the closest bookshelf, watching Mab for a minute longer out of pure selfishness as he appreciated the little moment of joy on a rainy day.

"Stephanie!" another voice called, and the toddler ran past in the other direction, followed by a rider in a black-and-yellow wheelchair. A different woman, securing an infant in a complicated-looking chest carrier, collected the enthusiastic toddler with a look of relief on her face.

She said something quietly to Mab, who grinned and shrugged before waving goodbye to the suddenly shy child. The mother reached for her purse but Mab shook her head repeatedly, even rolling backwards to put some distance between them. The mother looked grateful, nodding and pulling gently on her toddler's arm before heading in the opposite direction.

Steve's feet moved without proper instruction as they brought him within casual distance. "Hi again," he said as he walked into her field of vision.

Her head snapped up like she'd been badly startled. "Oh, hi!" she said loudly. A librarian shushed from the end of the row and Mab flushed a deep red.

Steve grinned mischievously. "Where are your manners, Mab?"

"Oh get stuffed, Steve." Her words were harsh but her face looked amused. "Funny running into you again."

He lifted the collection of books in one hand. "New books for my friend." Loud thunder boomed through the lower levels, the strength of it making Steve glance up out of habit.

"Contacts?" Mab asked, seemingly out of context.

"What?"

Mab pointed at her eyes. "No glasses today, just a hat. Contacts?" She kept talking, thankfully giving Steve enough time to wrap his head around the thought. "I could never get used to the idea of putting little pieces of wet plastic in my eyes every morning. Thankfully, my eyes are one part of me that actually works properly."

"I broke them, actually." it seemed a better answer than they're a part of my disguise and I forgot them today.

She looked confused. "Your contacts?"

"My glasses. They broke," Steve clarified.

"Ah." She rolled her chair forward and back a bit.

Steve glanced down at the books in his hand. "I liked the book. The poems, I mean."

She smiled faintly. "Clearly you like torturing yourself, then."

"I'm told I wallow on occasion," he admitted.

Her eyebrows shot up. "Your friends are blunt."

"You have no idea."

It was an odd thought, that Mab kept up just fine with his stride rolling smoothly on well-maintained tires.

She hung a tight left into an aisle and scanned her slip of paper before searching the stack.

Steve waited, hands in his pockets.

"It's the red cover up there - could you grab it for me?" Mab asked.

Steve scanned the cover as he pulled it down. Conversation Casanova: How to Effortlessly Start Conversations and Flirt Like a Pro.

He put the book back on the shelf. "So that's how it is?"

Mab was laughing behind a hand, trying and failing to hide the sparkle of amusement. "I'm sorry," her shoulders shook with laughter, "but it was just too easy. And your face!" She moved her hand from her face to her chest to reveal her broad smile, tapping her thumb against her collarbone. "But that was mean, I'm sorry."

Steve nodded. "Yeah, you look real sorry."

"No; I mean it. Let me carry your books."

"No, I couldn't-"

"Because I'm a girl or because I'm in a wheelchair?" she cut his protests off with a sharp raise of an eyebrow.

"Because I'm scared of what else you might sneak into the stack."

"I'll be good; I promise." She held out her hands for the books. She went through the stack immediately after receiving them, putting her two favorites on top. "Mm. The Emperor of All Maladies and Nickel and Dimed. Someone has good taste."

Steve didn't want to admit the circulating librarian had chosen them. "So what are you actually looking for, Mab?"

"Ah yes - follow me." The art of navigating with the wheelchair seemed to be a delicate art. It didn't appear to have any kind of braking system, so turning and maneuvering was based on the careful application of pressure and grip to the handrails of the back tires. The quiet friction of steel against the thin fingerless leather gloves sounded like distant ocean waves on a timeless shore.

"Here it is," she offered the book for Steve's inspection.

The History of English Syntax. "I'll be honest, not what I was expecting."

"It's to settle an argument with a colleague."

"You came all the way to the library, braving the perils of public transit, to find a book to settle an argument?"

She bobbed her head side to side. "Well, hopefully, to win an argument."

"That is…"

She raised her eyebrows, challenging; "Infuriating?"

"Determined."

Mab took her book back. "Can I ask you something?"

"I think you just did."

She sniffed indifferently. "Okay, smartass; why did you step in with that drunk on the bus?"

"What do you mean?" Steve was confused.

She waggled a finger like a disapproving mom. "Good New Yorkers keep their heads down, Steve."

"I don't like bullies."

"You're adorable."

"Are you this blunt with everyone?"

"Oh no, you're definitely special."

"Lucky me."

"Cheeky." She pulled a phone out of her pocket to check the time. "And distracting, too. I lost track of time and I need to check out if I'm going to catch my bus. I like to get going before rush hour so I don't get dirty looks if the bus is going to be full."

Steve was mildly appalled. "They wouldn't-?"

Mab interrupted with a dark laugh. "Oh, ho ho; yes they would!" She shrugged it off. "But I understand it, at least. Good seeing you again."

"You avoiding me?" he asked spontaneously, raising his voice enough to be shushed from a few rows over.

She paused, the leather fingerless gloves skimming the handrails just enough to come to a stop and turn at the same time. "I would honestly not dream of avoiding you, Steve." She rolled backward, smiling in a suspiciously knowing fashion. "But I do have to go." She vanished too easily for someone in a vividly striped wheelchair - probably following the easiest route she'd practiced a dozen times through the stacks.

Steve thought about wandering through the aisles, grabbing a book at random and see where it brought him. But, he thought with a chuckle, he might pick up a landmine like Conversation Cassanova out of universal irony. He worked his way back up to the main level and checked out instead.

Steve slipped the books into his jacket pocket but his attention was drawn to a black-and-yellow chair rolling in the opposite direction. The roar of heavy rain on the ceiling high above thundered through all thoughts like an intrusive thought in its own right. It ran alongside the image of Mab using both hands to navigate her wheelchair, making soft ocean tides as she turned corners.

Thundering rain overhead, and both of her hands navigating gentle tides. Both hands. He lengthened his stride to catch up as she approached the accessible side door. "I'll wait with you."

Mab spluttered for a moment, resisting; "It's pouring, you really don't need to."

Steve was resolute. "I insist."

She huffed, lips thin as she stared up at him. "Well, then you're going to have to share an umbrella because I refuse to let you get soaked." She held out a compact green umbrella.

Steve unfurled the umbrella as Mab pushed a button that remotely operated the doors. It was a little tricky to get down the narrow ramp with both of them under the umbrella, but they managed.

Steve followed Mab's directions to get back to the front of the museum and they joined a small huddled group waiting under a covering of umbrellas at the bus stop. The bus shelter had been damaged and was cordoned off with some caution tape and a sad-looking traffic cone, leaving the riders exposed to the elements.

Water poured from the lions' backs in little waterfalls, smacking against the sidewalk in off accompaniment to the sideways glances Mab seemed to be receiving from others waiting for the bus. She caught his gaze, speaking volumes with a slight tilt of her head and a quick raise of an eyebrow.

Steve had gotten used to being the one on the receiving end of odd looks. Ever since the serum his height and breadth alone had drawn stares. In uniform, the effect was multiplied by an order of magnitude. Impressed, adoring, appreciative; those were not the types of looks Mab seemed to be getting.

He understood it a little better as the bus pulled up to the curb and no one moved as the doors opened. "Come on; I'm supposed to get on first," Mab said, rolling towards the bus.

The driver spotted her and nodded, reaching for a different set of controls next to the steering wheel. The bus crouched lower to the curb and a part of the stairs started to unfurl towards the concrete.

Mab rolled back slightly, and a quick glance at her face showed a confused frown. Steve was about to ask if everything was alright when the screw-lift jerked, vibrating the panel in place like a frightened bird. It dropped swiftly onto the sidewalk, slamming into the concrete with enough force to break the curb.

There were hushed whispers from other passengers waiting to get on the bus. The driver fiddled with the controls as his face reddened, and It took a few valiant tries to get it moving at all. It only seemed to want to retract into the bus in shuddering starts and stops, some internal gear whining in protest.

"Uh, I don't think we should try to lift you, ma'am," the driver called over the pouring rain.

The tired defeat on Mab's face didn't even look fresh; like these sorts of things happened all the time and she'd just learned to accept it. Steve knew the look. He'd seen it plenty of times on his mother's face. He'd seen it on Bucky's face. He'd seen it in the mirror. A tired resolution that carved away at the soul.

"I think there's a diner around the corner, maybe we can get something warm to drink while you wait for the next?" Steve suggested.

Mab sat very still in her chair as the other riders walked around her, easily ascending the three steps that proved to be a barrier to her transport. "Are you sure?" she asked quietly. "I mean, this is your bus, right?"

Steve shook his head as the bus driver shot him a 'you getting on or not' kind of look. "I've got other options. Come on - let's get coffee."

The lions outside the library glared down in judgment as the bus pulled away from the curb.

Steve had never been more aware of every uneven spot in the sidewalk; every spot where a trash can narrowed the field, and every broken curb ramp. Rainwater was collecting at every corner, skimming the bottom of Mab's shoes as she rolled from one block to the other.

It was an odd relief that the diner had a sloping concrete ramp up to the diner's front door. Mab didn't say a word as Steve held the door open, not even to ask for any assistance in conquering a minor steel-lipped threshold.

It took a waitress a full seven seconds - Steve counted - to seem to figure out what she needed to do when Mab asked for a table. "Uh, can you give us a minute? We'll need to move some chairs around."

Mab smiled blankly. "Take your time. We appreciate it." There was that odd smile again.

Chairs scraped as they rearranged the tables - not only to give them a table with only one chair but to move other seated patrons a few feet to the left or right so Mab could actually squeeze past and get to their table. It was a relief when they were seated.

"You two need menus?" the waitress asked.

"I'll just have coffee, please," Steve replied.

"Same. And dry toast," Mab added with her empty, vague smile.

The coffee came quickly, Steve leaving his black even as Mab added hefty amounts of heavy cream from a miniature carafe but avoided sugar entirely.

"So what do you do, Mab?" Steve asked as she seemed to uncoil the steel from her spine when the waitress gave them space, leaning forward on the table to fiddle with the paper placemat.

"Can't you tell?" She gestured broadly with her arms. "I'm a ballerina."

Steve snorted into his coffee but immediately looked horrified at his own amusement. Thankfully, he held in the apology that was written on his face.

But she smiled at it - a real one, not the vaguely empty one she seemed to make under all other circumstances. "I'm an editor for a publishing firm downtown; so basically, I read for a living. What about you?"

He was unprepared for the reciprocated question. "Uh, I'm a… military... contractor?"

"That sounds interesting! Do you get to travel a lot? I'd ask you where's the most interesting place you've been, but I imagine you can't tell me; classified, and all that." Mab coughed into her elbow, wincing slightly. "Sorry," she apologized quickly.

"You apologize a lot for things that aren't your fault," Steve parroted her earlier words.

"You know what, I take it back," she grumbled, "hope you get pneumonia." Mab's toast arrived and she ate it very slowly. "Do you like your work?"

"What do you mean?"

She dipped her toast in her coffee briefly. "It's a very normal question, Steve."

"I… don't know what I would do otherwise." Steve stirred his coffee with a spoon even though he hadn't added anything to it.

Mab made a thoughtful sound. "Well, that's depressing."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well," she smiled at the waitress as she refilled coffees, though Mab scowled immediately as soon as she turned her back. "She threw off my cream-to-coffee ratio…" she grumbled in explanation as she tried to correct it with the limited amount of cream left in the carafe.

"Excuse me?" Steve raised a hand, getting someone's attention. "Could we get more cream, please?"

The waitress beamed. "You got it, hun."

"Why do you say that's depressing, Mab?" Steve drew her attention back.

"I tripped over something sensitive there, I think." Her face did something funny where it looked like she was trying to smile, but hadn't managed it well. Her cream arrived and she spent careful moments getting the correct ratio back in her coffee, spending the time clearly mulling over her thoughts.

Her quiet contemplation made Steve a little apprehensive, and the long breath she took before speaking a relief. "If you take into account all of the ways that we reference our jobs in American culture, you have to come to the conclusion that we are nothing without our work. So, if you don't love what you do you either hate yourself or are in abject denial of yourself."

"That is depressing," Steve murmured, stirring his coffee again.

"There's also a third option," Mab added hastily.

"Is the third option jumping out a window?"

"You've just got bills to pay." She shrugged, and she glanced around before adding; "It's not a crime to simply... survive."

"So do you like what you do?" Steve asked quickly.

"No," she said, "I don't. But I've got bills to pay and my plans of being a ballerina didn't work out so well."

"Why not?" Steve asked jokingly.

She made a dramatically sad face and sighed wearily. "As it turns out, I can't jump very high."

Steve had to laugh, and Mab laughed along with him, losing the last bit of toast in her coffee. "Oh, shit -" she went fishing with a fork, appeared to think about eating the overly-soggy bread, and then discarded it on her plate with a half-disappointed sigh.

"Do you want more toast?" he asked.

"Nah," she said. "You know," she stirred her coffee and stared at the marbling of cream and coffee, "most people either want to talk nonstop about the chair, or they can't talk about it at all."

Steve gestured to the chair in question. "Can we talk about the bumblebee stripes, because I've got to know."

"Oh, that's a funny one, I-" evidently laughing and talking at the same time wasn't so doable, because she started coughing. A few deep gulps of cold coffee seemed to do the trick at stopping it.

Steve's phone buzzed, and a message from Natasha popped up. Wrong turn in Brooklyn? You're late.

They moved the buildings, he texted back.

Drop a pin and I'll send a ride :)

Steve dropped a pin around the block - he definitely didn't need Mab to see him getting into a luxury car, that would only raise questions he was hoping to avoid - before shoving the phone away. "I'm dead serious about the stripes, but I've got to go." He tore off a corner of the paper placemat, grabbed a pen from his pocket, and scribbled the pen to get the ink flowing.

"Here," he handed her the strip of paper. "If you ever want someone to wait with you in the rain for the bus, just give me a call."

Mab stared at it, her expression blank.

"Maybe I do need to go back and check that book out," Steve joked nervously.

"No!" Mab exclaimed. "I just…" she set her hand on it but didn't quite accept it. "You do… see the chair, right? Spinny thing with black and yellow stripes? What are you trying to do here?" she asked accusingly.

Her warm face returned as the waitress came by with a carafe of coffee, refilling both mugs even though Steve was clearly leaving. "Thank you," she said, sounding earnest even though her eyes still had a sharp glint against him.

"What do you think I'm doing?" Steve asked carefully.

Mab hesitated, admitting softly; "I don't know."

"Okay then." He stood, pulling a twenty from his wallet and handing it to the waitress as she passed. "So… next time it rains, I'll be expecting a phone call."

Mab looked down at the strip of paper, then up at him. "And what if it rains tomorrow?"

Steve adjusted his hat and turned up his jacket collar to protect from blowing rain. "Then I'll see you tomorrow."

Stepping outside of the diner was like walking into a hurricane. The rain had gotten worse and a powerful wind had joined it. He was grateful to be getting a ride but thought in hindsight maybe he wouldn't have minded getting picked up just a little closer.

His phone buzzed and pulled it out to glance at the screen, expecting to see a witty reply from Natasha about how old men get lost. Instead, an unfamiliar number had texted him.

If you ever feel the rash desire to wait around in the rain, you can call me, too.

A/N: A combination of circumstance now leaves the two of them as… more than strangers, that's for sure. Mab is 100% just yanking Steve around because she thinks it's funny. But also, staring at Captain America's phone number: Error 404, polite response not found.

I always find it interesting what themes become repeated when I write for a couple. For Bucky and Alice it was plants and sunrises. For my last YYH story, it was hands and stars. For this one, I think it's going to be rain and water.

THREE CHAPTERS IN THREE DAYS. Thanks, COVID-19 for keeping me trapped inside. I guess y'all get some decent content out of it.

I love my reviewers! Victoria650, cameron1812, and huffle-bibin!

PLEASE REVIEW!