#cap and ruby

[capandruby]

chapter two

Charlotte stood just inside the bank doors, with her face pressed to the wall and her hands clenched into fists. “Hey, Charlotte!” Ruby called, from her position on the sidewalk. “It’s over! They won! You can come out now!” Charlotte pushed away from the wall and wearily looked out the doors. She carefully made her way to where Ruby stood on the sidewalk.

“Come on, let’s go back to the café and see what’s going on,” Ruby told her.

“No way, Ruby. I’m going home. I’m going home and I’m staying there, and I don’t know that I am coming back to the café, ever,” Charlotte said, shaking her head. “I’m about to walk to the closest subway station, and I’m going to pretend that none of this happened, and I might go sleep for a week or two.”

“Please be careful!” Ruby shouted after her, watching her friend as she walked at a fast pace away from the destruction. Charlotte waved over her shoulder, then disappeared down into a subway stairwell.

Ruby picked her way through the rubble back up the street to the café. She could see the giant green monster, Captain America, and Thor huddled together further down the street, and she tried to stay out of their viewpoint. Ruby didn’t want whatever the green thing was to see her moving down the street and think she was the last remaining alien or something. She flattened herself slightly against the buildings as she passed, trying to stay inconspicuous.

When Ruby made it back to the café, her boss, Jack, was standing in the middle of the destroyed dining room, looking around helplessly. “Ruby!” he said, relieved, as he caught sight of her coming through the door. “You’re alive! But you’re bleeding. And…Charlotte?”

Ruby reached up and touched her head. Sure enough, her fingers came back sticky with blood. It must have been from where the café window blew in on me, she thought, or when the windows were broken in the bank. “Charlotte’s okay, but she’s a little, um, shook up,” Ruby told Jack. “She went ahead and went home for the day. She’s probably going to need a few days off.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Ruby, you should go on home too. There’s nothing left to do today.”

Ruby looked around the restaurant. The people who had used it as their hiding place had all filtered out, cautiously skirting the rubble and heading to safer ground. Overturned tables and broken chairs were strewn about, and glass and silverware littered the floor.

“I will board up these broken window and I will leave too. We will clean another day.” Jack told Ruby.

“I’ll stay and help you board up the windows, then I will go home.” Ruby said. She and Jack found some plywood in the storeroom, left over from boarding up the windows for Superstorm Sandy, and covered the broken glass as best they could. It was lucky that no one had thrown the boards out yet. When they were finished, Ruby walked back to the employee room, dodging random, misplaced dining room furniture, and retrieved her purse, which was still miraculously hidden in place. She pulled out her phone. Twelve missed calls from Katie, and ten text messages, all more frantic than the last. Ruby read the most recent message as she was walking out the door.

Please text me Ruby. Please don’t be dead.

Ruby quickly sent her a reply.

I’m alive. I’m on my way home now. I’ll tell you the story then, okay?

Carefully Ruby moved through the mess on the ground on her way down the sidewalk. After an afternoon like this one, she was definitely staying above ground, so she ignored the subway entrance that was breathing hot air into an already warm day. A horde of reporters were standing outside the ground level of Stark Tower, and Ruby tried to avoid them by crossing the street, but she wasn’t fast enough. One reporter ran up to her, tugging his cameraman along, and confronted her in the middle of the street. Ruby wasn’t worried about traffic; other than the reporters, there was no one else around. The reporter shoved his microphone in Ruby’s face, rapidly firing questions and asking her opinion of the battle. Did she think that it only happened because of the presence of superheroes in New York?

Finally, exasperated, Ruby cut him off with an answer. “What? That this is somehow their fault? Captain America saved my life. Wherever he is, wherever any of them are, I just…I would want to say thank you.”

The reporter pulled the microphone from Ruby’s face. Apparently, that was not the sound bite he wanted for the story he had already written in his head. Fine with Ruby. She just wanted to go home anyway. Quickly she walked the rest of the way across the street and down the block, turning the corner from the destruction. It felt like someone was watching her, so she glanced over her shoulder. No one was there. She let out a quick breath before noticing a man sitting on the sidewalk a few storefronts ahead of her. His hair was black, down to his shoulders, and he was propped up against a doorframe. He was dressed too nicely to be homeless, though he did have a defeated look about him. He turned his face toward Ruby just a fraction, and she saw that he had something across his mouth, almost like a dog muzzle. Ruby tried to act natural as she crossed the street again. From the other side of the road, she did her best to ignore the man, but it was like his presence called out to her, and it was impossible not to look over. He was sitting in the doorway of a shwarma restaurant that had gotten minimal damage in the battle and looked open for business. Ruby could see shadows of people sitting inside, but she couldn’t make out anything specific from where she was standing. She looked at the man again, and this time he caught her glance, staring at her with pale blue, ice cold eyes. She broke eye contact and hurried down the block, but his look haunted her all the way to her apartment.

 ***

“RUBY! Oh my God, Ruby. I don’t think that you could possibly imagine how incredibly worried I’ve been. Your face, oh, God, Ruby. What happened to you?”

Katie was practically hanging out of their apartment door when the elevator doors opened on Ruby's floor. Ruby dragged herself down the hall and into the apartment, shutting the door before Boo, her cat, could escape. Generally he was pretty good about staying inside the apartment, but sometimes he couldn't resist the lure of freedom, and this was not the day to chase him down the hall and lock him back inside.

Ruby ignored Katie's questions, instead looking at Katie's all-black, skin-baring outfit. "Gotta work tonight, Katie?"

"Yeah, I need to leave if I am going to make it on time, but Ruby, I couldn't leave without knowing that you were really okay."

Katie worked at a hotel bar in Manhattan, and she was fantastic at what she did. She also interned at some giant, important company doing unimportant things, but that was only a few days a week. Bartending paid the bills and gave her something to do when she wasn't at her company job. Her wardrobe tended to change based on what she was doing, and tonight was definitely a bartending night.

“I’m fine. Really. I made it home in one piece, and I’m not going anywhere else, probably until Jack calls me in for a shift. Question,” Ruby said, changing the subject abruptly. “Whose turn is it to pay the water bill?”

“Yours. I have to run, Ru. I’ll be home late, but I am going to want the full story at some point.” She ran out the door, a whirlwind of black clothes and perfume. Ruby shut and locked the door behind her, sliding the security chain into place. She walked into her bedroom, kicking off her now dust-covered chucks just inside the door. Boo lifted his head from his perch on her bed and, after blinking large yellow eyes at Ruby, stretched out and put his head on her pillow. Ruby ran her hand down his fur, and he gave a couple of half-hearted purrs before closing his eyes and going back to sleep.

Ruby shucked her uniform and threw it in the laundry hamper, then walked to the tiny, shared bathroom. Katie and Ruby took turns paying the water bill each month, and since it was her month, Ruby had no second thoughts about staying in the shower as long as the hot water held out. As soon as the shower was steamy, Ruby slipped behind the curtain and leaned her head against the wall, hot water streaming down her weary body. A delayed reaction, her legs began to shake, so she slid down the wall until she was sitting in the combination tub/shower, the hot water massaging her muscles. She closed her eyes, thinking against her will about everything that had happened that day.

First, it was obvious that she was going to have to change her stance of life on other planets. Hereto, she had been a firm believer in only Earth inhabitants. Clearly after today's battle and the appearance of the beautiful demi-god Thor - whose identity she had previously thought a publicity stunt from the media - she was clearly on the wrong side of the equation. So, aliens. Existing. Okay.

Secondly, it appeared that there were humans with superpowers living among the public. Of course, Ruby remembered when it made the New York One news that Captain America, beloved in World War II times, had been discovered, frozen in ice deep in the heart of the Arctic regions, and again when he woke up in present-day New York. She had heard of his superior strength, and seemingly more-than-human abilities, but she had never really assigned him the "superhero" title before. Because superheroes are in comic books, right?

Of course, there was Tony Stark. If you live in New York, you know Tony Stark. Mostly because of Stark Industries. Tony had inherited the company from his father, Howard Stark, who designed weapons. No one really cared about Tony Stark until he was kidnapped overseas, almost died, and built a rudimentary Iron Man suit to blast his way out of a dark cave, using only scrap metal and his arc reactor - not that Ruby really knew what an arc reactor was, just that the news said that it keeps him alive. Oh, and that a giant version of an arc reactor blew up once and killed some guy in the company. After that, Tony was always in the spotlight. There was some battle involving his Iron Man suit and some other giant metal suits that the government created. He was in the news when he made Pepper Potts, his assistant, the new CEO of Stark Industries, and again when they announced their decision to venture into clean energy. He was everywhere now, and you just got used to him if you lived in New York. Ruby sighed; super smart, super arrogant, super irritating Tony Stark. He wasn't a superhero, he was just a cocky guy who figured out how to make a flying suit of armor.

At this point Ruby realized that she only knew about these "heroes" from what she had heard on television. Jack kept the cafe's only TV on New York One, and since New York liked to claim home to both Stark and Captain America, they ran stories on them all the time. Mostly Ruby tuned it out, but she was at the café a lot, so she'd learned a lot. But only from the news – no other stations or real-life people had ever talked about them personally.

Then, the giant green monster guy. Ruby honestly watched him change from a man into a giant, hulking, screaming mess right in front of her. As the image replayed in her head, she opened her eyes, and her contacts swam in the water stream. Maybe I won't think about the green guy, actually, she thought. There were two more people out there today. A woman with an impossible figure, dressed in what looked like black leather – which could not have been fun to run around in all day – and some guy with a bow and arrow. Just like Legolas in The Lord of the Rings, she thought, with less hair. Or a male Katniss. Ruby couldn't recall many specifics about them other than that.

She stood and found the shampoo. Ruby washed her hair, nudging the temperature of the water up as she lathered. Finally, the hot water turned lukewarm, and she jumped out before she got goose bumps. In her room, Ruby found her favorite pair of pajama pants and an old beat-up t-shirt. She changed quickly and jumped into bed, snuggling Boo as he changed positions. Before clicking the Netflix app on her Xbox, Ruby flipped on New York One.

There was nothing but live coverage and reports from Park Avenue on the screen. An old man in Central Park, playing checkers: "Superheroes in New York? Give me a break!" Captures of little kids battling in the streets with homemade swords and garbage can lid shields. Footage from the attack. And – Ruby sucked in her breath – her own interview from this afternoon: "Captain America saved my life."

She quickly switched on the Xbox and clicked Netflix. The app brought her to the Doctor Who episode she'd been watching when she fell asleep the night before ("Are you still watching?") and she clicked to continue. However, after watching the opening credits, Ruby decided that Doctor Who wasn't what she wanted after all, and turned the episode off. She'd had enough of aliens today, thank you very much. Finally she settled for a glass of tea, a Snow Patrol CD, a Jane Austen novel, and pretending that nothing else had happened that day.

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[stevesmotorcycle]

reminder that i post writing and fan fiction at cap and ruby. follow for updates :)

[capandruby]

chapter one

The alarm on her phone buzzed, and Ruby fumbled with the buttons before finding the one that allowed her to sleep for another ten minutes. She closed her eyes, rolling over in bed with a groan and causing her fluffy orange cat, Boo, to readjust his position beside her. If she didn’t get out of bed before the alarm went off again, she would be late for her shift at the café. Ruby groaned again. She didn’t want to get up. She wanted to stay asleep for another hour. Or, if she was being honest, another four hours. The manager and owner of the Central Café Bar and Restaurant, Jack, had asked Ruby to open this morning, even though she worked a double shift yesterday because of a staff shortage. It was the beginning of August, though, which was the end of the summer tourist season. The café would be busy, and Ruby was booked to work another double today. Ruby was exhausted just thinking about it, but at least she’d get decent tips today.

Lingering in bed, Ruby shut off the alarm when it buzzed again and finally forced herself to get up. She patted Boo’s head as she made her way to the apartment’s tiny bathroom. Ruby could hear her roommate, Katie, in the kitchen. Judging by the noises, Katie was making coffee. Ruby and Katie’s apartment was small, somewhat cramped, and had paper-thin walls, but it was all they could afford when they moved from the deep South to New York. Rent in New York wasn’t cheap, and this was the cheapest place they could find that wasn’t dirty or in a terrible part of town. The girls had moved to New York at the beginning of May, right after Katie graduated from college. Ruby had finished school the year before, and was working a dead-end retail job when Katie called Ruby from Tennessee and asked her to be her roommate with a Manhattan address. Ruby had been living at home with her parents in Alabama, and she jumped at the chance to leave town.

Ruby smiled as she lathered up her hair in the shower. It had been about three months since she had arrived in New York, and she was finally getting used to living in a city. No, she couldn’t see the stars from her apartment, but there was something electric about living in the city. Nothing in her twenty-four years had prepared her for leaving sleepy, small-town Southern living, but Ruby was thriving. She came from a town where everyone not only knew her name, but also the name of all of her relatives. Here in New York, she was just one face in the crowd, in a city of a million strangers. It felt nice to be invisible for once.

Ruby knocked her elbow on the shower wall as she turned around to rinse conditioner out of her hair. The impact knocked the bathroom clock off the wall. She jerked the shower curtain to one side, wiping water out of her eyes as she peered at the upside-down numbers. She jumped out of the shower, wrapping a towel haphazardly around her body as she slipped back into her bedroom. She quickly dried her hair before putting in some hot rollers, then sat down on the floor next to a propped-up full-length mirror to do her makeup. Working at the Central Café was not her ideal job, but it paid the rent. The café wasn’t famous, or even that well-known, but it was close to Grand Central Station and practically in the shadow of the notorious Stark Tower, so it got a lot of walk-in tourist traffic.

Ruby outlined her eyes in liquid eyeliner and mascara, but decided against any other makeup. Despite the fact that she had lived twenty-four years in practically year-round humidity, New York in August still made her sweat. Working near a hot kitchen all day didn’t help any. So instead of wasting time and money on makeup she would end up wiping off in an hour, she left her face bare. She looked at the clock again and quickly pulled on her pink café uniform, slipped on socks and her favorite black Chucks before yanking out her rollers and pinning back her hair with some bobby pins. She looked in the mirror and sighed; as usual, this was as good as it was going to get.

Ruby gave Boo an air kiss as she ran out the door. He opened an eye and stretched, and went right back to sleep. Ruby wished she could curl back up with him. She stuck her head in the kitchen to say goodbye to Katie.

“I’m working a double at the café today so I’ll be home late,” Ruby told her, before running out the door and down the stairs. She walked briskly in the bright sunshine down to the nearest subway station. She ducked underground, making it through the turnstiles just in time to hear her train coming. Ruby didn’t bother finding a seat; she instead just hung on to strap above her head. She didn’t live too far from the café, so the train ride only took a few minutes. She stepped off at Grand Central Station, which never failed to impress her, and walked in the sunshine the short distance to the café.

The Central Café Bar and Restaurant is an indoor/outdoor place located on the corner of Park Avenue. When the weather is nice, tourists like to sit outside under the green table umbrellas and take in the scenery, gazing at other tourists, the tall city buildings, and Stark Tower, Tony Stark’s obnoxious monument to himself.

Ruby stored her purse in the employee-only area just off the kitchen, grabbed her white apron, and started her long day. She wrapped utensils in napkins and filled ketchup bottles, waiting on the locals to dash inside for a bagel and to-go coffee before heading into the office. In the early mornings, the café just offered small breakfast items, like bagels, croissants, English muffins, and pastries with coffee and some juices. It was basically just for locals, and it gave the café a bit of easy business in the mornings when the staff was there anyway. Tourists usually starting coming in any time after 10:30, and they are offered a few brunch options along with a full lunch menu. Leftover pastries from the early morning are offered throughout the afternoon, and then the dinner shift starts at four. Jack closes early, so everyone is cleared out by eight.

This morning was slower than usual. Ruby found herself lost in thought, standing behind the long front counter with her elbows propped up on the countertop. She spent the morning in a dreamy state, gazing outside to where people were starting to crowd the sidewalks. Things began to pick up late morning, and soon the tables outside began to fill with people wanting lunch. Charlotte, Ruby’s only friend at the café, came in to work the lunch shift. The two passed each other as Charlotte was going to seat a couple and Ruby was coming in to pick up a ticket. Distantly they heard the sound of breaking glass. Charlotte stuck her head out the door of the partially-full café.

“Hey Ruby, I think that came from Stark Tower. I don’t see any glass though.”

“Probably just the construction guys, Charlotte,” Ruby said.

She shouldered a tray of food and began to head back out the door. After dropping off the food at the correct table, she took the order from another party that had just seated themselves outside and walked back into the kitchen to drop off the new ticket. Ruby grabbed a dish box and went back out to bus a table. Charlotte wandered over. She helped Ruby clear the table as she talked in a hushed tone.

“Hey, Ru, not to freak you out or anything, but take a look at the tower.”

Ruby glanced up toward Stark Tower and then back down at what she was doing.

“Do you see that blue light? What do you think he is doing up there?” Charlotte asked.

Ruby looked up again, and this time she noticed a blue beam of light reaching toward the sky. “Maybe he is experimenting with another one of those Iron Man suits,” she suggested. Tony Stark was not Ruby’s favorite person. She had never met him, but every interview she had ever seen him do just made him seem…too arrogant, or something. She just hoped that whatever he was doing up there wouldn’t leave the café without electricity. Again.

Ruby looked at Charlotte as she finished clearing the dirty plates. Charlotte was staring at the sky, open-mouthed, with fear in her eyes. “Ruby…” she started to say.

Ruby looked back one more time and saw that people on the bridge nearby had stopped their cars and were getting out of their taxis, staring at the sky, and running away. The sound of people screaming began to reach the vicinity of the café, and the customers began to look up in alarm. Before Ruby could even react to any of this, she heard an explosion and instinctively ducked under the metal table. Something she had never seen before was headed her way, skimming above the ground on what looked like a flying motorcycle without tires. The flying vehicle was covered in creatures, five, maybe seven of them, all flying toward the café. Ruby thought to herself that it was almost like a real-life Star Wars.

Each creature was shooting everything in its path with a long stick gun, and things were blowing up everywhere. The outdoor diners were screaming, flipping over chairs and tables in their hurry to get out of the way. Charlotte screamed, and the sound echoed in Ruby’s ear, startling her into action. She and Charlotte almost slammed into each other in their race back to the café doors. Ruby jumped through the stores and ran to the window; her body was shaking. What was happening? None of this made any sense to her.

While she was standing at the window, peering out at the unbelievable sights in front of her, Ruby watched a giant plane fall out of the sky. It was on fire, and it crash-landed, sliding to a nose-first stop against a high rise. The hatch opened, and a tall man dressed in what looked like a blue uniform decorated with a giant star and red and white stripes ran out and onto the bridge. He was carrying a round shield. Ruby’s brain was slow, sluggish with the horror on display in front of her, but it finally clicked that he was Captain America. She had remembered when the small television in the corner of the café had spent an entire week discussing the discovery of his body, buried in ice and still alive. Captain America was followed by a muscular man carrying a bow and a woman dressed entirely in skintight, black leather.           The three of them stared at the sky, and Ruby craned her neck to try and see what they were looking at from where she was standing at the window.

It didn’t take Ruby long to figure out what had stopped these three in their tracks. Something she could only describe as a giant, metal, flying snake flew by the café windows. Everything outside that hadn’t already been knocked down was now on the ground. Ruby’s brain was only functioning in short spurts, but she knew that she couldn’t possibly imagine something this crazy, something so terrifying and hard to describe. More of the creatures that had been shooting at people earlier jumped off the giant snake’s back and flew into windows of nearby office buildings.

Even more of the creatures began to fly by on their air-motorcycles. What were they? Aliens? Ruby wasn’t sure that she believed in aliens, but something was attacking the city and she couldn’t come up with another explanation. Pieces of buildings were crashing to the ground, and the creatures, the aliens, whatever they were, were shooting cars, overturning them with huge, fiery explosions.

Ruby blinked, astonished, as she watched Captain America leap off the bridge and somersault down onto a bus before directing the police into action. He jumped back up to help the other two, still fighting up on the bridge. Suddenly, with a giant bolt of lightning, a man with a hammer and a cape fell to the bridge. Instinctively, Ruby knew that he was Thor, the demi-god from another world, but she wasn’t sure how she knew that. She saw another man hop off of a motorcycle and turn into a giant green monster. Ruby shook her head, sure that she had taken crazy pills that morning. The green monster punched a giant flying snake in the face, and it literally stopped so suddenly that its tail went flying over its head. Tony Stark came flying around the corner in his Iron Man suit, and blew up the snake before it hit the ground.

Ruby saw the flying metal before it got to her, and she ducked below the window. Charlotte was already crouched on the ground, crying. Glass shattered, falling on her head, cutting Ruby’s face and hands. Ruby wiped some blood from above her eye and pinched herself, just to see if she were dreaming. It hurt, but she couldn’t believe that she could really be seeing everything that was happening.

The creatures began screaming, and one was so close that it raised the hair on Ruby’s arms. The green monster answered them with a roar that sent chills down Ruby’s spine. Suddenly, Ruby was yanked up by a tight grasp on her wrist. One of the alien creatures pulled her and Charlotte from their spot at the café window, herding them into a large group of frightened people just outside the café’s door. Several of the creatures were guarding the group with their guns, and they marched them over to a bank a few storefronts down.

“They’re taking us hostage!” Ruby thought to herself, panic rising in her throat. Charlotte was still crying, holding Ruby’s hand tightly. Ruby saw the green monster out of the corner of her eye, leaping higher than she thought was possible, begin to throw the alien creatures off of buildings and into the street below. The aliens guarding the group pushed their prisoners into the main lobby of the bank, leaping up onto a second floor balcony to watch for anyone trying to leave. One of the creatures held a small, beeping box, which Ruby was pretty sure was a bomb. This is when she realized that she would die today, here in this bank, surrounded by Charlotte and a bunch of strangers. Ruby began to think of everyone she would never see again. One by one, she thought of her friends and family, a tear leaking out when she thought of Boo, sleeping peacefully on her bed in her tiny apartment. She really, really hoped he was safe.

Explosions and metallic clangs continued to sound from outside the bank’s walls. Right when Ruby was steeling herself for the pain that death would surely bring, she heard glass breaking for the third time that day. She jerked her eyes open in time to see Captain America fly across the room from the broken window. He knocked the gun from the alien’s hand while kicking two more out of the way. He ran to the ledge that overlooked the lobby and shouted, “Everyone clear out!” to the group before one of the creatures attacked him from behind. The creature pulled at his head, removing his mask. In the split second before he turned to fight his attacker, Ruby saw his face for the first time. He was absolutely beautiful.

Captain America wrestled with the alien, pushing him across the room, sending him across the floor to where the beeping bomb lay. The alien grabbed the bomb, and everyone in the lobby ducked, sure he was going to toss it over the ledge and down on them. Instead, he threw it at Captain America. Captain America grabbed his shield to deflect the blow, but it exploded on impact, and the force threw him through another window and outside. Someone screamed in horror. It may have been Ruby, she wasn’t sure.  

The only alien to remain standing was distracted now, climbing out the bank window. Though it was probably safer to stay inside, a majority of the crowd ran up the steps and out onto the street. Ruby followed; after the last two minutes, she didn’t ever want to be in a bank again.

Ruby stopped short on the sidewalk. Buildings had huge holes in them, cars were upside down and smoking, and dead aliens littered the street like garbage. Glass was broken everywhere, and people were crouched behind anything they could find to stay out of the line of fire. She directed her gaze upward. Beyond the smoke from the debris, it was still possible to see the blue beam stretching from Stark Tower to the sky. At the top of the beam was a giant black hole, looking out of place with the rest of the blue, clear sky. Ruby swore she could see stars in the black void. However, the stars kept getting bigger, and she realized that they weren’t stars at all, they were more aliens. More and more poured out of the hole and into New York. It didn’t look like they would ever stop. Even with all of these heroes in Manhattan – because she’d decided that they were, what else could they be at this point? – how could the heroes keep fighting when there wasn’t an end to the battle? It was a lost cause.

But before Ruby had even finished forming that thought in her mind, a glint and a flash of red caught her eye. It was Iron Man, hanging on to a giant missile, guiding it up to the black hole. They both disappeared through the void, and about thirty seconds later all of the aliens dropped to the ground. People began to come out of their hiding places and destroyed buildings, cheering. The beam of light cut off, and the hole began to shrink rapidly. Ruby kept watching the sky. What was going to happen to Tony Stark? Just because she wasn’t too fond of the guy didn’t mean that she wanted him to disappear. He did just fight to save the city, after all. Ruby held her breath as the hole collapsed in on itself.

Come on, come on, she thought. Just before the hole completely closed, a flash of red raced toward earth. Ruby let out the breath she wasn’t even aware she was holding. At least it appeared that Tony had fallen back to earth. Ruby sighed, relieved. The battle was over, and, for now, at least, she was safe.

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[stevesmotorcycle]

okay so i know nobody cares about this, because nobody reads my fan fic anyway, but i just got inspired in the shower and i'm going to completely re-do the entire thing. even though school just started again. it may be a while, but stay tuned for updates. whooo.

[stevesmotorcycle]

really? i write tons of fan fiction and then i post one thing about sam caflin being amazing as finnick odair and it gets more notes than anything i've done to date?

[stevesmotorcycle]

here's the chapter 4 teaser from the cap and ruby fan fic. follow the link above to read the story so far!

***

I was almost ready when Katie walked past the door to my room. She backtracked, looking in at me. “Ruby? Where are you going?” 

“I, um, have a date.” I told her, sheepishly. I hadn’t mentioned Steve to her before, though I wasn’t aware of consciously making that decision.

“A date! Ru, why didn’t you tell me! I could have helped you get ready! Or lent you some clothes! Wait a second…is that my sweater on your bed? Guess I did lend you some clothes.” She laughed.

“Do I look okay?” I asked her, unsure. I was wearing a plain black sundress, with a skinny tan belt around the waist. I’d paired it with a bright blue cardigan and tan sandals, because I had no idea where we were going for dinner. 

“You need jewelry.” She said. “Where are you going tonight?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know much of anything about this guy, except he’s gorgeous and he’s a regular at the café. I don’t even know his last name.”

“Ooooh, sketchy. I like it! Way to go, Ruby!” Katie disappeared back into the living room while I finished curling the ends of my hair.

A minute later, I heard the buzzer go off. Katie stuck her head out the apartment window and looked down at the street. “Ruby! You’re going on a date with Captain America? That is the opposite of sketchy; I take back my congratulations. Except, he is a hot superhero, so you can keep some of it.”

“What?” I called back to her, walking out of my bedroom, looping a long necklace twice around my throat. “I’m not going on a date with Captain America. I’m going out with a guy named Steve.”

“Yeah, Steve ROGERS, aka Captain America! The six foot hunk of patriotic beauty standing on our stairs right now?”

I walked over to look out the window. There was Steve, and all of the sudden he looked up at me and met my gaze, and I found myself staring into those deep, blue eyes. Immediately my mind reconciled the new information Katie had just given me with the eyes I saw during the Battle of New York. His face mask was being ripped away by an alien, and I had thought to myself how beautiful the Captain was. The thought was almost mocking me, now.

“Hey Ruby, can I come up?” he called. I nodded mutely, walking to the door and pressing the buzzer to open the door. 

As he made his way up the stairs, I put my face in my hands. The butterflies in my stomach multiplied exponentially. I was going on a date with Captain America? How could I have been so blind and not have seen the resemblance before? How could I go out with a superhero when I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that superheroes actually existed?

[stevesmotorcycle]

chapter three teaser. click the link above to read the full story so far!

***

It had been a week, and while things in New York weren’t quite normal yet, it was getting back to where it was prior to the Battle of New York. Because that’s what the media had named it – an attack against New York City, led by Loki from Asgard, brother to Thor, and soldiered by a Chitauri army from another world. Supposedly, the six superheroes, generally known now as the Avengers, were scattered about respectively, all in hiding. People were still doing crazy things, like walking around the city with their skin painted green, or wearing quickly-made clothing with symbols representing the different heroes on it, or tattooing symbols on their skin. I won’t lie, I went to the grocery store, and on the way home I stopped at a ten-dollar t-shirt booth and bought a gray shirt emblazoned with Captain America’s shield. It’s hidden in my closet, and I haven’t ever worn it, but it’s still there. 

I’ve been hiding in my apartment for the last few days, answering the phone only when necessary, and surviving off the meager contents of my savings account. I’d given Katie the full account of my first-hand experience in the battle, including details on Loki, sitting prisoner outside the shwarma restaurant, staring at me with those blue, haunting eyes. I’d seen his image enough times on the news to know that he was the one who stared at me on that walk home. I had been avoiding the rest of the world until last night, when Jack called and said he was ready to open the café back up, and he needed me in at nine today.

On the way in this morning, I looked up at Stark Tower, or A Tower, since the A is the only thing left of Stark’s name, and watched the construction men begin to repair the damage. It was rumored that Tony Stark was still in New York, supervising the repair work, but no one had seen him yet. Reporters camped outside Stark Tower at all hours of the night, but only Pepper Potts had been seen, and she refused comment. 

I sat behind the café counter, rolling silverware, and watching people pass by out the windows. It was a slow time of day, and we only had a couple people in the café, eating a late breakfast. Jack hadn’t opened the outside dining area yet, and he mentioned that he might leave it closed until next tourist season. As it was, the employee-only area was stuffed with patio furniture that hadn’t gotten damaged in the battle.

The bell on the door chimed as someone walked in. The café was self-seat when we weren’t in the lunch or dinner rush, and I watched the man read the “Please Seat Yourself!” sign and glance around the room. He chose a spot beside a newly-repaired window, and I put down my silverware and walked over with a menu and an order pad. 

“Hey, I’m Ruby, I’ll be taking care of you today. Here’s your menu; what can I get you to drink?”

He turned his deep, blue eyes to me and smiled. “Hi Ruby, I’m Steve. Can I get some coffee?”

“Su-sure.” I stuttered, caught off-guard. This man, Steve…I was almost positive I’d met him somewhere. “I’ll be right back with your coffee, take your time with the menu.” I almost spoke robotically as I backed away, trying to recall where I had seen those eyes before.

[stevesmotorcycle]

full chapter! apologies for it taking so long, been busy with school.