Only One

as you wish

"You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you." I mutter, eyes focused, transfixed in front of me.

"You seem a decent fellow, I hate to die."

"You're doing it again."  The voice to my left mumbles, amused.

"Sorry." I laugh, grabbing a handful of popcorn from the bowl in my lap. "Force of habit."

Steve is sitting on my couch about a foot and a half to my left. He has to reach his arm out to take some popcorn for himself, so I pick up the bowl and move it so it's sitting between us.

"How many times did you say you'd seen this movie again?" He whispers, popping the snack into his mouth.

"I don't know." I whisper back, my gaze still focused on the screen. "Who even keeps track of that sort of thing?"

"Someone who hasn't seen it enough times to quote the entire film." He retorts.

"Shhh, you're missing things!" I hiss back, watching as a sword fight breaks out between two of the characters.

The Princess Bride had always been one of my favorite movies. I knew I'd seen the movie a lot of times, although I hadn't realized I'd literally seen it too many times to count. It has anything you could ever want in a movie, great action, passionate romance, and well-timed jokes that still make me laugh in spite of how many times I'd seen them unfold in front of me.

"How come nobody fights with swords anymore?" I ask absentmindedly, watching as Inigo Montoya jumps off of a rock, sword waving in the air like a madman. "Have you seen Pirates of the Caribbean?"

Steve shakes his head back and forth silently.

"Of course you haven't." I sigh, shaking my own head. "What exactly have you been doing with all your time these days?"

"That's classified." Steve replies.

From the corner of my eye, I can see him smirking slightly, although his gaze is still on the swashbuckling Inigo.

"Smart ass." I mumble under my breath.

"What was that?" He asks, his head turning to look at me as his focus drifts from the screen.

"Shh." I shush him for a second time, picking up the bowl and placing it in his lap. "Eat and watch."

Steve chuckles at my bossiness, taking another handful of popcorn and letting his gaze shift back to The Princess Bride.

It was hard to believe that a year had passed since Steve had been found, frozen in time, and trapped under the jet he had crashed back in the forties. All things considered, I thought he was dealing with the whole thing fairly well. It couldn't have been easy, waking up seventy years later, submerged in a vastly different looking world with pretty much zero familiar faces. Obviously, this was an experience that wasn't extremely comparable to anything from my own life, but sometimes I feel like I understood a little of what it must have be like for him.

The company I worked for had informed me that they were going to transfer me from my home state of Michigan, all the way to New York. I didn't know a single person that lived there at the time, but I hadn't been given much of a choice. I couldn't have afforded to continue on without a job for very long. It had taken me long enough to find the first one, who knows how long it would have taken to find another.

Two weeks later, I said goodbye to my family and friends, leaving them behind to start a new life in a strange city. The bright lights and the bustling crowds full of unfamiliar and often unfriendly faces was disorienting. It was hard not to feel out of place, like I hadn't even been given a chance to really belong here. I imagined that feeling was just a small fragment of what Steve endures on a daily basis.