2019-12-30 - Navy Bean Soup and No More Fur

Summary:

May and Steve share a May-made lunch in hard-earned quiet.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Mon Dec 30 05:43:29 2019
Location: Triskelion

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

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steve-rogersmelinda-may

It's been a few days, and May is so unaccountably GLAD she's no longer a cat. She's showered, dressed (perhaps a bit warmly, but darn it, it's chilly without fur), and even enjoy the heck out of a pot of the strongest black tea she owns. Then, as she's been informed that she's not yet been returned to active duty rotation, she decides to use her time to offer thanks to the people that made the whole ordeal tolerable, and dedicated large amounts of their time and energy to figuring out how to undo the curse.

First up: Steve.

She sends him a message asking to meet over lunch, citing a break room near the Triskelion's residential area that is equipped with a kitchen. Anyone merely passing by the break room encounters the aroma of cooking, but quickly move on when they see who is responsible for the food being prepared.


Bzzt-bzzt-PINNNNG — the chime from Steve's cellphone on his desk rings even as he glances over from reading information on his desk's holographic screen. Ceasing to nibble on the pencil's pink eraser, he sets the writing utensil aside to sit up in his chair and pluck the phone up to see who's contacting him.

Oh, Agent May, she recently returned to her true form, and the time is around lunchtime. Steve thumbs down the main menu from the top of the phone's screen and finds he has about half an hour to finish up.

Half an hour passes quickly enough and here's Steve at the break room door, opening it with a pleasantly curious expression on his face. He's in a steel-grey button-down and dark slacks today, all tailored to sit comfortably (and flatteringly) on his frame.

"Got your text," he says firstly as he closes the door behind himself. "Something you needed?" The Captain's stomach growls to scent whatever's cooking; it's surely a compliment in itself.


"Yes." May is as verbose as always. At least that hasn't changed. "I wanted to thank you for your help these past couple of weeks. You and I both are not really much for materialistic things, so I thought this might work better." She finishes stirring whatever is on the stove, and ladles out a good-sized bowlful.
"Please, sit." She sets the bowl on the table alongside the place setting alreayd waiting there.


Steve lifts his brows. "Thoughtful of you, Agent May. You certainly didn't have to go to these lengths, but 'm grateful that you did. I was going to end up at the cantina for another one of the sandwiches with meatballs 'nd cheese. This smells even better."

With a scoot and then in-scrape of chair, the Captain sits himself before the bowl set out. A deep inhale brings him further appreciation of its contents. He still gives May a glance.

"You're up to snuff then?" If anything, his attention is quietly measuring now. It's not unkind or pressuring, but there's the impression that he's weighing her own experiences against his own and wondering if she too has any lingering affects to her psyche.


May serves herself a (considerably smaller) bowl as well and joins him at the table. "I still have a few more days of evaluations, but unless something is found I should be back on the duty rotations the first full week of January." The bowls contain what looks and smells like traditional, Depression-era navy bean soup.


Dipping his spoon into the navy bean soup, the man stirs through it once, twice, a third time to test the consistency. A flood of memories come back and flicker against the back pane of his attention:

Sitting at a rickety table in a chair hard enough to hurt the backs of his thighs, thankfully tall enough that he doesn't have to angle the spoon awkwardly and risk spilling — Bucky laughing at something, his dimples showing — the fall of snow outside and how they're bundled up despite being indoors — the smell of the soup and wood smoke from the stove and the other tenants next-door and below them making their own sounds of living — Bucky's little sister giggling in that way she did, bright-eyed behind the messy evening state of her two braids —

Steve comes back to himself with a small inhale and twist of lips that made into something more neutral. He huffs a short laugh and leans his head to one side in half of a shrug. "Sounds like you get a vacation, for what that's worth." May gets a small understanding smile. "Better find a temporary hobby, eh?


"Would it be too much to admit that I'm actually looking forward to going to a tea party just the tiniest bit?" Yes, that's what May has planned as her thank you to Keiko's family. "I might even consider taking a dress to wear." She starts in on her own bowl of soup, but no she didn't miss Steve's reaction to it. "There's about a gallon of this stuff left. You should take it to Barnes."


Like the Titanic, the head of Steve's spoon begins a slow, unnoticed descent into his soup. He's still trying to parse what he just heard.

May.

Tea party.

Dress.

His brows dance up and down. New things every day! "Not at all. If it's something positive, why not look forwards to it? 'nd I will take all of the soup, thanks. It'll be one of those meals easy to reheat on days when neither of us get home until late."

It's not that Steve can't feed himself, but more than Bucky is the far better cook and more prone to taking the lead on such things. He too then begins eating his rather larger serving. It…tastes like a memory still and he smiles around the spoon. When his mouth is free, he glances over at May again.

"So… Seems like you had a few helping hands there in the book store. I saw Loki 'nd his wife, but who were the other two women?"

Goddesses, he doesn't say aloud, though he's only partially correct in his assignment of title in the end.


"Honestly, I'd never seen either of them before. The dark haired one was answering to the name 'Bast', though." Which probably explains enough to Steve. "And the blonde one, she… summoned the spirit of a dead person, I think?" May most certainly can't clearly remember much of anything that happened AFTER that, so the before is really all she has to work with. And it's more than a little bit frustrating having that gap in her memory.

"Ready for the main course?" Yes, she cooked more than soup.


It takes some sifting through dusty remembrances, but the name 'Bast' finally brings to mind not a goddess, but a sculpture famous in its travels around the world. Ah, right, Egyptian, cat goddess — it does make sense. Steve's spoon moves at a regular pace and the volume of his bowl decreases at the same steady speed.

Surprised to realize there's more than just soup, Steve pauses in scraping up the last mouthful. "Oh. Yes, sure, there's still room," he manages in a light joking. The caloric intake of the pair of super-soldiers is a known amusement around the Triskelion. Shifting the empty bowl and spoon to one side, he gives May a more searching look.

"Don't know who the blonde one was?" The one who made his innards tingle as if he were set to jump from a plane sans parachute and yanked his subconscious rudely back into a state of lupine influence.


May gets up and pulls a tray out of the oven, clearly having been set in there to stay warm. She quickly serves up two plates — again, one with larger portions than the others and vast amounts of leftovers — and carries them to the table. "No, but I got the impression that bookstore owners do. Maybe that can help you further in that regard."

The plate's contents look simple enough, meatloaf, red potatoes, and asparagus. But again, May sought out 1930s recipes for these seemingly basic staples.


"Oh, wow." Steve breathes this aloud as he sees the next plating to be set before him. The potatoes are familiar enough, but there's something about the complimentary greenery of the asparagus and the thick chunk of meatloaf that impresses his sense of self dated back to his childhood.

"I'll stop by 'nd speak with Loki then, if I can," he continues, taking a fork to the meatloaf with its glazed outer layer. "Glad I didn't interrupt too badly when I walked in. He sent me a message, but didn't give a lot of warning — no warning at all about what was going on." The amendment comes with a quick frown, but he refuses to let the whole…incident accented by a cranky appearance of Glydril ruin his food. It's delicious!


May nods. "That's probably for the best," she says as she starts in on her own plate. She's never been a fan of meatloaf, the texture always seemed odd to her. But, this meal isn't about her preferences. "And why am I not surprised that Loki didn't warn you about what you'd be walking in to?" That just sounds so much like the dark-haired spellcaster.

She has plans for showing the otherworldly couple her gratitude for their assistance and understanding. And from what she remembers about them, she'll have to find some particularly special tokens.

"How did you meet Loki, if I may ask?" She … dropped in on the couple. Literally.


Steve pauses in cutting his asparagus into more manageable pieces as to not look the part of a horse browsing through twigs as he eats.

"Meet him? Met him more'n once before this, both politely 'nd when he's chosen to kick a hornet's nest. Thor talks about him a lot too. Listening to him tell stories about when he 'nd Loki were young reminds me of me 'nd Barnes sometimes." His smile shifts from pleasant recollection to a brief wrinkle of discomfort: unintentionally comparing himself to the dark-haired Trickster God doesn't sit well with the man whose morals are stronger than his skull. "The shenanigans, I mean," the Captain clarifies. "He's been less trouble lately though. Stopped by the cell I was in back when I was dealing with that virus, the lycanthropic one. Promised me help if I needed it 'nd we shared some food. It was…"

He pauses, brows wrinkled lightly. "Hate to say 'odd', but he's unpredictable. I wasn't sure most of the time if things were going to go sideways suddenly. The wine was good though, even if it just tasted good. Don't mind going 'nd speaking to him again."


With a faint sound of acknowledgement, May accepts Steve's story. Thor's brother, that explains some things, but not everything. Like, why Sigyn and the other blonde woman smelled similar but Loki didn't. She's also cutting up her asparagus to make it more … genteel to eat.

"Well, that explains a few things I noticed about him." Not just the magic. "He and his wife both were extremely understanding of my situation, and seemed to put extra effort into making me feel welcome in their store." And in that little side garden. That was the most peaceful she'd felt since before that rogue spell went off.


"Hmm. Glad he didn't find it more amusing to toy with the magic. Not that he would've, just…" Steve's voice falls out again pensively. "You don't get the nickname 'Trickster God' lightly. He was understanding of my state too when I was in the cell."

Some conclusion arrives by the man's brief pause in forking up some meatloaf. "Wonder if it was because it all involved changing shape." He looks over at May. "Shapeshifting. Me 'nd the whole werewolf thing, you 'nd the cat. I've heard Loki can change his shape, never seen him do it. Probably figured we weren't used to the whole concept."


"I've seen it. I was there when some other people arrived, and he came in looking like a raven. It was … disconcerting." Of course, it was more disconcerting that he used his magic to punish a rather rude young woman, but the raven was also different.

"I hope you saved room for dessert," May adds as she sets her plate aside. "I made rice pudding."


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