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chapter two
NIGHT LIFE
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FOR A SEVENTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD woman, Ceres's night life is pretty active.
The bar is packed tonight. Most of the customers are male, their chatter and yells filling the air as they react to some sports game playing from the various televisions mounted to the walls. They shriek in excitement, curse out of anger, and down beer like their stomachs are bottomless, gaping holes. Their faces slowly redden and their optics glaze over. The sharp tang of alcohol fills the air, stinging nostrils and making eyes water.
All of this is background information to Ceres. She'd gotten accustomed to this long ago — by the third week of this job back in '02, actually. It's a necessity when working as a bartender. If she hadn't learned to drown out the constant noise and filter what she actually needs to hear, she'd go home with a pounding headache after every shift.
Even if Charles occasionally helps with the bills, being a barista alone isn't going to cover the remaining portion of her rent. Inflation had called for a second job. Ilyas's salary is hefty, but still not enough for them to afford the apartment that they have thanks to the cost of living in New York.
"Hey, sweetie," a man says as he leans over the bar, causing Ceres to look up from the glass she'd been drying with a dishrag. He has the look of someone who's tipsy but not quite drunk yet— wide-set eyes glassy, pale skin slightly flushed, a flirtatious smile on his lips that are surrounded by a salt-and-pepper beard. He must be at least fifty. "Gimme a Brunt Pilsner, will ya?"
Ceres flashes him a smile of her own and sets the glass down on a low shelf, noticing the way his eyes drop to the cleavage that her black tank top exposes. "Coming right up."
She turns toward the craft beer section and drops her smile. The things she does for tips. Though, she supposes, using her body for some extra cash isn't that bad. Back when she'd first started, she may have let some people take body shots off of her when Ilyas had been out of work. Showing off her assets to a few men isn't the worst she's done in times of need.
Sure enough, the customer gives her a tip in thanks, raking his gaze over her tall form one more time before turning his attention back to his group of buddies. People fall apart at the idea of anything sexual. Ceres will never understand it — well, she had once or twice with the few partners she was physically intimate with — but understanding this is part of the reason why she can afford to keep her apartment.
As the night dwindles down and the customers start trickling out (more like stumbling in most cases), Ceres starts spraying down the wooden counter and wiping away condensation rings from sweating bottles and rogue puddles of alcohol that had been spilled. Only a few more people remain in the bar. There's a couple against the far wall who seems to be arguing about who loves the other more. Bill, one of their regulars, sips from his drink in his usual booth near the windows.
One last customer sits at the counter. He slowly nurses a glass of scotch, taking his time with downing the amber liquid. It seems like he's more interested in swirling it around instead of actually ingesting it; he appears to be lost in thought as he props one elbow on the wood.
Ceres tosses the damp rag over her shoulder and approaches him. "We close in fifteen minutes."
The man doesn't look up. She stops in front of where he sits, wondering if he's that spaced out where he didn't hear her. Maybe he's drunk? "Sir?"
The man looks up. Most of the people who come here are either regulars or semi-regulars, but Ceres is certain she hasn't seen this guy here before. He has black hair that sticks up in all directions. It makes him look younger than he probably is, which might be from his mid-thirties to early forties. Unlike most of the people she's seen tonight, his crystal-blue eyes are clear and sharp when they meet gazes.
He reaches up to his left ear. It's then when she realizes that he's turning on a hearing aid. Her cheeks flush with embarrassment, heat consuming her entire body and making her want to crawl into a hole and die. "Oh my God. I'm so sorry— I didn't realize—"
"It's all right," the man says with a charming smile. "I get it a lot. What did you say?"
"We close in fifteen minutes."
"Oh." He checks the time on his phone, eyes widening. "Holy shit. It's this late already? Sorry— I'm new around here. Got rejected from a job interview today, and I guess I lost track of time. And how many drinks I've had."
Ceres gives a small laugh at the half-joke. Then, she turns serious. "I'm sorry to hear about that. Job market's been tough."
He makes a face. "You have no idea."
She allows him to take a few more sips of his scotch as she continues cleaning up. Her coworker had called in, so it's just been her tonight, and things are a little messier than normal since she hadn't had much time to tidy up between tasks.
Bill-the-regular takes one last sip of his beer, tipping the bottle back as far as he can to get every last drop. Ceres knows that's his signal and prints out his receipt, placing it on the counter with a tap of her nail. "Here's your tab, Bill."
"Wouldda been funnier if you said, 'Here's your bill, Bill,'" the mystery man says with a chuckle to himself. "Do you know all of your customers' names?"
"Mostly the ones who are here a lot," Ceres replies. She waits for Bill to pay and stuffs the money in the register, then accepts his tip with a smile. "Have a great night, and be careful out there. See you Wednesday."
Bill gives her a nod and leaves. Now it's just her, the guy, and the drunk couple who now looks close to passing out at their table. She'll probably have to shoo them out or get their bouncer to do it— wherever he is.
"So, what's your name?" she asks the scotch guy.
"Is that your way of asking if I'm gonna come here often?"
"It's being polite," she counters with a shrug. "I heard it gets you a long way in service jobs. Well, sometimes. Other times, people just throw their drink at you."
"I'll try not to do that," he says. "I'm Francis."
Ceres can't help it— she raises her eyebrows with a laugh threatening to puff out of her lips before she smothers it down. He catches the look, though, sending her into a flurry of apologies.
"Sorry. I'm sorry. That was rude. It's just — you don't look like a Francis."
But he takes it in stride. "Must be why my friends call me Frank."
The conversation doesn't last much longer because he finishes his scotch, pays in cash, and leaves. Ceres can't help but think that there was something familiar about him even though he said he's new around here. Maybe she's confusing him with somebody else; it happens quite often when you've been around this long.
Brooklyn's streets are quieter than usual at this hour. It's either late or early depending on what side of the coin you're on, but since it's a little after four a.m., it's that pocket of in-between. It's a little too late for partygoers to roam the streets in search of an open bar. At the same time, it's early for most people to begin their morning commutes to work.
The roads aren't empty. A few stragglers mill around— drunk people on their way back from last calls at the bars, others working night shifts and heading home, like Ceres herself, or ones looking to cause trouble.
It's a relatively short walk to her apartment, one that she's taken so many times that it's muscle memory by now. Her legs walk without her having to tell them where to go, her mind wandering to her bed and how she's going to pass out as soon as she kicks off her alcohol-stained shoes and wriggles out of her jeans.
A high-pitched whistle cuts through her thoughts like a knife. "Hey, sexy."
Ceres rolls her eyes at the catcall but keeps walking, planting her sneakered feet one foot in front of the other, reminding herself that home is just two blocks away. Two blocks and then she can drift off into a blissful slumber.
"I'm talkin' to you!"
The man, who'd been leaning against a street lamp and smoking a cigarette, straightens up when she breezes past him without a second glance. In the brief moment she'd looked him over, she'd caught sight of greasy, shoulder-length hair and a handlebar mustache. His clothes are so large that they practically swallow him whole. Despite this, he's still a large guy, towering over her and thrice her width.
Ceres keeps going, a little faster this time, her knuckles curling into a fist at her side as rage bubbles inside of her. This is why she hates walking alone after her shifts. There's usually some creep lounging around, looking for women to prey on.
A large hand snatches her wrist.
This creep has picked the wrong woman.
He yanks her closer to him, the scent of smoke and body odor washing over her like an unpleasant tidal wave. "I said, I'm—"
Ceres slams her elbow back into the man's gut. His grip loosens, but he still has her arm captured, so she turns and smashes her right fist into his face while he has the wind knocked out of him. A satisfying crack! splits through the air as blood bursts from his nose. She uses a foot to swipe his legs out from underneath him and land him on his ass on the sidewalk. He groans, one hand cupping his bleeding nose and the other cradling his gut.
"Bitch," he spits in a hoarse voice.
Just as Ceres is about to turn and walk away, leaving him there on the pavement, the man moves to grab her ankle. She sidesteps and sends a blast of light at his eyes from her palm. He yells, either out of pain or frustration or maybe both, as she stomps out his still-burning cigarette on the pavement.
"What the hell are you?" he demands, his eyes squeezed shut and blood staining his teeth.
Ceres doesn't answer. Instead, she tells him, "You shouldn't smoke. It's a nasty habit," and continues on her way.
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"The group is calling themselves The Avengers— comprising of billionaire Tony Stark, spies Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, Doctor Bruce Banner, and Norse god Thor. Whether they will remain together to protect us from any potential threats, or if they have already disbanded, remains unclear."
The news anchor has a blurry photograph of the group mid-battle on the green screen behind her. It was taken before the worst of the action began; they're standing in a circle in the middle of the street, but what exactly they're doing, Ceres isn't sure.
"What a bunch of phonies," Ilyas declares as he plops onto the other end of the sofa, a bottle full of clear liquid in one hand. He crosses one leg over his knee and takes a sip of his drink.
Ceres raises her eyebrows. "Phonies?" When Ilyas tips his head toward her, mid-swallow, his expression seems to say, You heard me. "That better be water."
"It is."
Ceres snatches the bottle before he can protest, lifting the open top to her nose and inhaling. The sharp tang of alcohol is absent this time. She's mildly impressed that he's actually drinking water without her having to force it down his throat. Once, he'd gone so long without it that when she'd made him take a sip, he'd gagged.
Ilyas plucks his drink out of her loose grip and mumbles, "I told you," before elaborating on his earlier point with a gesture at the television. "I mean, look at 'em. Half don't even have powers. One of their guys just climbs into a suit of armor that does everything for him. It's not like he has technopathy or anything. And only one woman? Sexist."
"Thanks for advocating for our inclusion," she says with mild amusement at his tangent. She hadn't expected him to feel so passionately about this. "Who do you think would win in a fight? The X-Men or them?"
"Oh, us for sure," he immediately replies. "You blind them, Erik traps Tony Stark inside his suit and turns Captain America's frisbee into a mangled heap, Charles and Jean control their minds, and Ororo takes all of Thor's lightning. Scott could incinerate them with his eyes. And me? I sit back and watch for moral support."
Ceres rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to the screen. It's on a commercial break, so she picks up her journal from the coffee table and flips to the pages she'd filled out back in May. In the top margin of her entry about the alien invasion, she writes AVENGERS and underlines it.
One of the struggles of being immortal is losing track of time. She used to think that she'd be able to answer all sorts of history trivia questions, but the days blend into meaningless memories, decades conflating into one big pile of mush in her brain. At least she isn't the only one who feels like this. Ilyas is even worse than her— sometimes he'll reference something from the 1920s and forget she wasn't even born yet.
Her solution to this is to write down important events, especially if she'd experienced them firsthand. There's a stack of journals in the corner of her room that have long since been filled. Sometimes she flips through them when she feels like having a mental crisis. Usually, she only gets past a few pages before she has to close the notebook and wonder if the Apollo 13 catastrophe was really over forty years ago and not ten.
When the commercials end, the news anchors begin discussing each member of the so-called 'Avengers'. Ceres is able to drown Ilyas out when they bring up Steve Rogers. She remembers their encounter like it was yesterday— the heart-stopping realization that the rubble was about to hit her, the bruising impact of the rocks on his shield instead, and the way he'd looked at her with such substantial concern despite the fact they'd never met.
There's so much that links them together. They're both out of their own times and most of their original loved ones are either dead or old. The world is constantly changing faster than they can keep up, but with Ceres, at least she'd lived through those changes. Steve had gone into ice in the 1940s and emerged into a new era.
"Captain Rogers, World War II hero and leader of the Howling Commandos, was born in 1918. He was rejected by the army several times before finally being accepted. This led to his selection by Abraham Erskine to receive the Super Soldier Serum, which enhanced his abilities to superhuman levels."
If only she could find him again... maybe she could help him. He thinks he's alone in all of this, but he's not. Ilyas wouldn't be willing to do anything. Therefore, Ceres is the only one who can.
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a/n:
i love confusing you guys and throwing curveballs to how you will react >:) hehehehe
i feel like death, but i wanted to update this story since it brings me so much joy. i've been having a LOT of fun with the pinterest board lately, so it gave me some inspiration to write! and it's been warm and sunny for the past few days (which is odd for this time of year), which feels like ceres giving me a little push.
i hope you enjoyed this chapter and thank you for the kind comments on chapter one!
—kristyn
( word count: 2.7k )