Ponytails and other tactlessnesses

The blond hair strands of the runner in front of him bobbed from one side to the other with every step she took. They swung back and forth like the mechanical pendulum of an old clock in front of her narrow neck, giving Steve a strangely insuring tact.

Right, left, right, left, right, left ...

It was a fast rhythm. Much faster than his own heartbeat.

That was probably why he kept his eyes mesmerized on the young woman's braid some twenty yards away, though he knew that was not exactly charming.

He needed it. Needed something to cling to; that was able to tie his thoughts a bit and help him to ignore how slowly everything about himself was behaving. His own pulse. His breathing. The non commiting fatigue in his muscles.

The woman in front of him was gaining speed. Her pink-and-blue striped sneakers picked up small drops of water from the wet asphalt behind her, tapping lightly on the pavement with each step. Steve adapted to the new tact, though he knew that the woman would not hold it for much longer. It was her final spurt.

Right, left, right ...

He felt the fine fabric of his T-shirt tighten around his shoulder blades as he moved his arms to the new rhythm beside his upper body. Not fast enough.

Right, left...

The fine, blond strands of her hair paused in midair, collapsing like surging ocean waves, before they came to rest above the hem of the woman's top. Exhausted, she rested her arms on her thighs and spinned her head, circling her neck. When Steve ran past her, he could see the steady lifting and lowering of her rib cage that ran through her entire body and showed itself in the fresh morning air in small, perishable clouds in front of her mouth.

Steve increased his pace.

He couldn't remember the last time he was really out of breath. A time he would have felt a heaviness in his legs that would have forced him to stop. A time his heart had jumped wildly in his chest, about to explode.
When was the last time he had felt alive?

Sure, the Chitauri Loki had ordered to New York had demanded everything from his team and himself. Had brought him to the limits of his own powers. But, by the end of the day, he had felt nothing more than a little tweak in his right side. At the end of the day he had laid himself in his much too soft bed, staring at the dark gray, almost circular, spots on his ceiling - the aftermath of a water damage – and had thought about everything that felt like nothing.

Sometimes he wondered if Erskine was aware of the extent his serum would have. Would he be proud of what he had created? Proud of the soldier Steve has become - a super soldier whose body regenerated within minutes? And would he be proud of the man behind the shield, sitting in his flat on a wobbly folding chair and gazing silently into the void? Of the man whose thoughts were caught in a time he could no longer reach; in a time that had sank into dry parchment like liquid ink?

Honor, courage, loyalty, sacrifice.

Erskine chose him then because he had seen all these qualities in him. Him, Steve, the slender boy from Brooklyn.

Most of the time, Steve managed not to think about the years before all of this. It was easy, when he was on a mission for S.H.I.E.L.D.. When he could direct his thoughts to a goal he wanted to achieve. Had to achieve. But as soon as the mission was over, his thoughts caught up with him again. They were not always visible, but they were always there. Like his own shadow. At those hours, when the light shone on his broad body, Steve envied the puny boy he once was. The boy who almost couldn't get into his own cot with exhaustion and had, most of the evenings, slipped into a dreamless sleep.

Time heals all wounds, that's what they say. Then again time was relative. Steve remembered a theory that a German scientist had set up before his birth. He was pretty sure that the physicist had not referred to this sentence, but at the moment it seemed plausible to him.

Perhaps he should really find himself a hobby, as Agent Romanoff always suggested.

He could start drawing again.

Or play the trumpet.

Steve set off for his final round at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. At this time of the day he hardly met other people. His watery reflection was the only runner who jogged beside him and was in no way inferior to Steve's pace. The fresh morning air was caught in his lungs, burning like strong alcohol in his throat and then again not. He felt the wind stroking through his blond hair and whipped his palms into the air beside him. He almost thought he sensed something like a hot burning sensation in the muscles of his thighs, but it faded as quickly as it had come.

It was much easier to focus on his body than his thoughts.

So much easier.

The checkered linoleum floor squeaked slightly under his damp soles and Steve shifted his weight a bit to nip that sound in the bud - even if it felt somewhat homey. It reminded him of the olden days. More like the barren corridors of even bleaker hospitals, but the olden days nevermind.

Lost in thoughts, he rummaged the slender apartment key out of his trouser pockets before a sound in his back made him turn around.

The apartment door behind him was opened with a wooden plow and spat out a ravel of tangled, brown hair and dark green fabric to the hall.

Panting, Cath blew a wet strand of hair out of her field of vision. "Oh, hey."

Her eyes looked as if she could barely keep them open and yet they were way too wide open at the same time.

Steve noticed that she was looking at the gray fabric of his T-shirt around his navel longer than he cared for before they found his face. He resisted the urge to fold his arms insecurly in front of his chest and instead smiled slightly obliquely. "Good Morning."

The bundle in her hands, full of various keys, made an iron-clipped sound as Cath turned around and made one of them disappear into the keyhole of her apartment door. She looked over her shoulder in his direction. "So, you're going for a run?"

Steve nodded at the key in his right hand. "Actually, I'm just getting back from my lap."

The slender lips of his new neighbor twisted into an amused grin as she eyed him slightly skeptical. "You're kidding me - you look like you've just changed your clothes." She made a sweeping gesture in front of her body, as if she were a show girl in the circus. "Look at me. I've been running frantically in my apartment for five minutes, looking like I've done a hundred-kilometer marathon. "

Steve had to smile slightly at Cath's words. She actually looked a bit tired. Her hair - probably still wet from the shower - hung in solitary strands in her face or stood confusedly above her forehead, as if she had pulled her shirt over her head in a hurry. The pale green seams of the shirt ran visibly along her narrow shoulders and the outsides of her upper arms, so that Steve wasn't sure if that effect was wanted or if she just wore the shirt the wrong way around. He could not say for sure with the fashion nowadays. A scarlet touch graced her upper cheekbones, as if she had been running for minutes against some icy wind and her sea-green eyes reminded him of the leaves of the trees in the National Mall Park. He wondered if her eyes had been so green when they first met. They were still looking at him, a bright sparkle among all this leafage.

Steve crossed his arms over his chest. "Thirty kilometers. Maximum."

Snorting, she stowed the keychain in her shoulder bag and lifted the strap over her head. "Well, there's still one more kilometer to go," she grunted. "I'll definitely have to run to the nearest tube station if I want to be in the office before my boss is." She made a slight grimace with her mouth before she added resignedly, "It's just impossible to get out of bed in time. I don't know how everybody does it."

I don't have this problem, Steve added in his thoughts almost melancholy, but forced himself to smile understandingly.

His new neighbor took a deep breath, as if she was taking it before an exhausting dive, and then headed for the stairs at the end of the hall. "See you."

Steve nodded and had already turned the key to his door when something else occurred to him.

"I don't look like Carson at all," he shouted after Cath and only then, as the words swung back from the dark concrete walls in the hallway, did he realize how strange their echo sounded. He bit his lower lip lightly.

"What?" Cath had turned around, one hand resting on the banister, the other wrapped around the belt of her bag.

"The butler," Steve added quickly. "I googled him on the Internet." He hoped it was what they said. "I don't look like him at all."

Steve didn't know why he had to get rid of that information in the hallway. Or at all. Actually, he still didn't know much about this fictional character other than he was an olderly man.

Cath's contracted eyebrows settled into a more relaxed position and the corners of her mouth jerked up briefly. "No, you don't."

She let her hand slide over the banister and Steve thought he heard her mumble to herself over her screeching soles, „Oh no, not at all."

His new neighbor shook her head as if to scare off an annoying insect and continued down the stairs to the front door. She took two steps at once.

Steve turned the key in his door lock and pushed the knob down spiritlessly. The new wooden floor shone slightly under his jogging shoes and absorbed the wet marks of his soles, like a canvas some applied paint. He dropped himself on the wobbly folding chair in his living room and opened the blue shoelaces of his sneakers with his numb fingers.

He definitely needed a hobby.

Thanks for reading and adding this story to your alert-lists :) hope you liked this little piece of Steves mind. The following chapters will get longer each time, promise. Have a nice weekend :)