drabble: Fair Fare
28 Aug 2013 20:14![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
domarzioneThis is mostly to get over my nonsensical belief that I'm not allowed to post anything less than a thousand words. (But it's still me, so drabble = 900 words)
Fair Fare
PG; 900 words
Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes
Once they'd saved up enough cash, it took them more than a month to find a day to get out to the World's Fair. The first weekend neither of them tried, it was a three-day weekend and there were extra hours to be picked up because everyone else wanted to take off and go away for a summer holiday. The second weekend, Bucky couldn't get off Saturday afternoon and Steve couldn't get off on Sunday. The third weekend, it was reversed until Steve got a last minute reprieve, but by that point Bucky had gotten a date with Doris Lasker and Steve told him to go because Bucky'd been making eyes at her forever. The fourth weekend, Steve was laid low with a summer cold that left him sweating out the sheets and coughing hard enough that Mrs. Conlon sent Mollie upstairs at midnight with hot milk with honey and whiskey so that the building could get some sleep. The fifth weekend Steve was well enough to work, but Bucky didn't think him well enough to wander around outside all day. (At least that's what he said. Steve rather thought Buck didn't want to take off because he was still trying to make back the money he'd spent on Doris, who'd thrown him over for one of the Martin boys on Friday night.) The sixth weekend, it rained and they ended up going to the pictures instead, paying for Frontier Marshall and then afterward sneaking in to Beau Geste during the newsreel because the theater had air conditioning and it would give them hours more relief from the stifling city heat. Bucky dozed off, but Steve ended up riveted by the story.
When they finally got to take the trolley up to Corona Park, it was already late summer and there had been enough stories and newspaper articles and radio reports that they had a list of things they wanted to do and see. Electro the Motor Man, the Futurama ride, the Dream of Venus, the race cars, the Bendix Lama girlie show, the parachute jump, the Aquacade, the Perisphere. They saw a Vermeer, a pygmy hippo, and Bucky had to help Steve out of the Smell-o-Vision when he started to wheeze. They saw an electric calculator that had punch cards and did sums much faster than Steve could do for Mr. Shiner's store, as Bucky gleefully pointed out. They saw robots moving boxes faster than Bucky could, too, so Steve felt that they were evenly at risk for being unemployed in the future as General Motors imagined it.
The only real argument they'd had about what to do at the Fair had been about where to eat. Steve wanted to save up for the restaurant in the French Pavilion with its exotic menu and intimidating waiters and a chance to eat facing the International Pool and the fireworks show, Bucky wanted to go to the Swedish Pavilion because the waitresses were very pretty and the food wasn't too strange. "I've been working hard for this," Bucky had protested, holding up a bill of fare Steve had cut out from the Bugle at the start of the Fair season. "I don't want to eat snails or weird stuff. You can go to Prospect Park and eat snails for free, we don't have to go up to Queens to pay for that." They ended up at the Swedish Pavilion, which was really hard to find, because Bucky's other choice was Toffenetti's and that wasn't exciting at all -- it was ham and roast beef and it was just a branch of a real restaurant in Chicago. Smorgasbord took some getting used to -- they watched waiters tut-tut customers who loaded up their plates instead of coming back for round after round -- but it was a lot of food and maybe more exotic than Bucky had planned on and the waitresses really were very pretty.
The next year, the Fair was a little different. The French Pavilion still had its fancy restaurant, but the Germans had overrun Paris and the World of Tomorrow was looking a lot more like one that would require tanks and guns instead of moving sidewalks and pianos that played words. But at the Fair, it was sometimes hard to tell among the kaleidoscopes and the roller coasters. They ended up eating at the Belgian restaurant, since if it came down to eating the food of the invaders or the invaded, well, neither of them wanted to eat underneath the glare of the giant Mussolini statue. Bucky let him pick, joking that if he didn't like the choices, they could go over to Toffenetti's. Bucky was working at the giant Toffenetti's in Times Square on the weekends and while he hadn't gotten himself assigned to the Fair, some of his friends had been and they'd spare a pal a meal. (They probably spared a pal lots of meals; Steve had his suspicions about all of the 'unsellable' food Buck brought back to Brooklyn.)
A few years later and a continent away, they ate their way around Europe for real and the first time they were served snails -- sitting on hay bales in a barn in the Rhone valley, grateful for the first hot meal in the two weeks they'd been in-country -- Bucky started to laugh and couldn't stop.
Fair Fare
PG; 900 words
Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes
Once they'd saved up enough cash, it took them more than a month to find a day to get out to the World's Fair. The first weekend neither of them tried, it was a three-day weekend and there were extra hours to be picked up because everyone else wanted to take off and go away for a summer holiday. The second weekend, Bucky couldn't get off Saturday afternoon and Steve couldn't get off on Sunday. The third weekend, it was reversed until Steve got a last minute reprieve, but by that point Bucky had gotten a date with Doris Lasker and Steve told him to go because Bucky'd been making eyes at her forever. The fourth weekend, Steve was laid low with a summer cold that left him sweating out the sheets and coughing hard enough that Mrs. Conlon sent Mollie upstairs at midnight with hot milk with honey and whiskey so that the building could get some sleep. The fifth weekend Steve was well enough to work, but Bucky didn't think him well enough to wander around outside all day. (At least that's what he said. Steve rather thought Buck didn't want to take off because he was still trying to make back the money he'd spent on Doris, who'd thrown him over for one of the Martin boys on Friday night.) The sixth weekend, it rained and they ended up going to the pictures instead, paying for Frontier Marshall and then afterward sneaking in to Beau Geste during the newsreel because the theater had air conditioning and it would give them hours more relief from the stifling city heat. Bucky dozed off, but Steve ended up riveted by the story.
When they finally got to take the trolley up to Corona Park, it was already late summer and there had been enough stories and newspaper articles and radio reports that they had a list of things they wanted to do and see. Electro the Motor Man, the Futurama ride, the Dream of Venus, the race cars, the Bendix Lama girlie show, the parachute jump, the Aquacade, the Perisphere. They saw a Vermeer, a pygmy hippo, and Bucky had to help Steve out of the Smell-o-Vision when he started to wheeze. They saw an electric calculator that had punch cards and did sums much faster than Steve could do for Mr. Shiner's store, as Bucky gleefully pointed out. They saw robots moving boxes faster than Bucky could, too, so Steve felt that they were evenly at risk for being unemployed in the future as General Motors imagined it.
The only real argument they'd had about what to do at the Fair had been about where to eat. Steve wanted to save up for the restaurant in the French Pavilion with its exotic menu and intimidating waiters and a chance to eat facing the International Pool and the fireworks show, Bucky wanted to go to the Swedish Pavilion because the waitresses were very pretty and the food wasn't too strange. "I've been working hard for this," Bucky had protested, holding up a bill of fare Steve had cut out from the Bugle at the start of the Fair season. "I don't want to eat snails or weird stuff. You can go to Prospect Park and eat snails for free, we don't have to go up to Queens to pay for that." They ended up at the Swedish Pavilion, which was really hard to find, because Bucky's other choice was Toffenetti's and that wasn't exciting at all -- it was ham and roast beef and it was just a branch of a real restaurant in Chicago. Smorgasbord took some getting used to -- they watched waiters tut-tut customers who loaded up their plates instead of coming back for round after round -- but it was a lot of food and maybe more exotic than Bucky had planned on and the waitresses really were very pretty.
The next year, the Fair was a little different. The French Pavilion still had its fancy restaurant, but the Germans had overrun Paris and the World of Tomorrow was looking a lot more like one that would require tanks and guns instead of moving sidewalks and pianos that played words. But at the Fair, it was sometimes hard to tell among the kaleidoscopes and the roller coasters. They ended up eating at the Belgian restaurant, since if it came down to eating the food of the invaders or the invaded, well, neither of them wanted to eat underneath the glare of the giant Mussolini statue. Bucky let him pick, joking that if he didn't like the choices, they could go over to Toffenetti's. Bucky was working at the giant Toffenetti's in Times Square on the weekends and while he hadn't gotten himself assigned to the Fair, some of his friends had been and they'd spare a pal a meal. (They probably spared a pal lots of meals; Steve had his suspicions about all of the 'unsellable' food Buck brought back to Brooklyn.)
A few years later and a continent away, they ate their way around Europe for real and the first time they were served snails -- sitting on hay bales in a barn in the Rhone valley, grateful for the first hot meal in the two weeks they'd been in-country -- Bucky started to laugh and couldn't stop.
