Mister Rogers ⍟ || Steve Rogers

ACT I: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Someone was going to choke.

You could feel it thick in the air, pressing in like a doomsday timer no one could stop. 

There were seconds left. No room for error.

I was already on my feet, pacing across the unsteady surface beneath me. My hard stare remained locked on him.

"He's not taking the shot," came Christopher's muffled voice from my phone, which I had launched across the room somewhere.

"He will," I snapped back. "He always does."

I froze in my position. The clock was bleeding out. Seconds felt like hours. The room fell silent as we watched him hesitate, then move. 

"Curry, side-step, AND ONE!"

I leapt from the sofa in my living room, running in circles around my coffee table. My phone exploded with Ivy and Christopher hollering over each other.

When I finally retrieved my phone from between the couch cushions, I announced to my best friend and her boyfriend, "Oh my goodness, I think I'm in love. I am in love with Stephen Curry."

"Get in line, Addy! God bless Steph freaking Curry!" cheered Ivy.

Christopher's head popped in beside Ivy's on the FaceTime screen. "We're going to the playoffs, baby!" he hollered with a whoop.

In unison, Ivy and I scrunched our noses. We both scolded him, Ivy demanding that he go knock on some wood. Christopher threw his arms in the air, "I can't win with you two."

Still, in the background I heard a faint tapping of knuckles against a desktop.

I giggled in response, but my attention turned back to my television as, following his made free throws, Curry was aggressively shoved to the ground. No call was made.

"Oh, come on!" I yelled at the same time Ivy angrily said, "Are you kidding?" Christopher booed the referees.

"A minute and 50 on the clock, Warriors down by 4 in Game 6, Clippers to advance..."

Upon my phone ringing, I cleverly transferred Ivy's call to my open laptop and answered the number flashing on my device. "Hi, it's Addy. I'm about to find a ref and do something very illegal, so I can't really talk--"

"Jones, quit watching pre-recorded basketball and get back to the present; you're on speaker," warned the menacing voice of Natasha Romanoff in my ear. 

"Right, sorry," I mumbled. My eyes stayed glued to my television.

"Fury assigned the team a mission. If we're to make it to the coordinates by night, we leave in an hour. I need you to pick up Rogers and get to the Triskelion. He should be running on his usual path."

"10-4," I said. I waited for the phone to disconnect before lifting my head from my shoulder; the phone slid off and fell into my lap.

"Draymond Green with the block! Tied with 40 seconds on the clock! Time-out, Clippers," spoke the commentators animatedly.

I used our televisions' conveniently matching advertisement breaks to break the news to my dear friends. Pulling my laptop into my legs, I grumbled, "Looks like duty calls..."

The couple's faces dropped. Ivy furrowed her eyebrows, "Isn't it like, six in the morning in D.C.?"

"Yeah, what was it you said you do for a living?" wondered Chris.

"I work, unfortunately," I said. For their safety, I've withheld any information about my work in D.C. since leaving California a year ago. "But you two must let me know whether we make it."

"Or you could just Google it," offered Ivy.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had been keeping me later and later recently. As a result, my regular Warriors-watching FaceTimes with Ivy and Christopher had suffered. We went from watching games live to recording them and watching together at absurd times—like six in the morning.

"Fair, but you two really know how to wrap a truth bomb in a nice bow."

"Have some faith, papi," Christopher attempted horribly as Fernando Sucre. "When they make it to semis, I swear on my mom I'll get a Steph Curry tattoo." With the three of us sharing a final laugh, I ended the call.

Smiling to myself, I dressed in black leggings and a deep blue spaghetti-strapped tank top. I threw my hair up in a messy ponytail while rushing out the door of my apartment, car keys held in my teeth.

I climbed into my S.H.I.E.L.D. issued vehicle, and the dashboard immediately lit up. A hologram popped out from my dashboard, "Hello, Ms. Jones, where are you headed?"

"Hi, I need to pick up Steve Rogers. He should be running his usual route."

The hologram disappeared, and a map flashed onto the dashboard. I reversed out of my parking spot and drove along the quiet road, music playing faintly. Stifling my third yawn, I found that leaving for an unplanned mission at six in the morning without caffeine was equal to torture.

I found Steve in the park talking to a man I didn't know. Slowing the car, I rolled down my window and smiled, "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, isn't it, Mister Rogers?"

He raised his eyebrows at me, shaking his head with a smile, "Hello to you too, Addy." The man he was talking to politely waved at me.

"Morning. Addy Jones," I introduced.

"Sam Wilson. Pleasure," he nodded.

"I apologize to interrupt your run, but we need to go," I said, gesturing for Steve to get in the car.

"Alright, Sam, duty calls. Thanks for the run... if that's what you want to call running," Steve chuckled, offering his hand for Sam to shake.

"Oh, that's how it is?" Sam raised his eyebrows at Steve, accepting his handshake.

The two exchanged a few more words, and then Steve stepped into the car. I immediately routed us to the Triskelion.

His brows furrowed. "You didn't send me a briefing message."

As Fury's former assistant and now one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top agents, I was usually among the first to receive mission details.

I frowned. "I know. Fury just assigned this mission. I haven't been briefed yet--" Once more, I yawned into my hand. "--either."

"Long night?"

"Try no night," I sighed with full regret of my decision to skip sleep.

He gave me a sideways glance. "Bold strategy, considering neither of us has any idea what we're walking into."

"Could be zombies," I offered.

"Or aliens," said Steve.

"Or just some really terrible people with guns and money," I joked, drawing a short chuckle from both of us.

Steve smiled before his gaze drifted toward the window. "Looks like we're about to find out."