I Loved You First | Not Easily Conquered ▸ [STUCKY]

Ch. 3

1963

Kat tells Steve that she is maybe thinking about possibly going steady with Robert Morrow, who is in her grade and spends, to Steve's understanding, about sixty percent of his time yanking on Kat's braid and daring her to climb trees by stating loudly that she probably can't climb trees, not in those shoes. He sounds just like Buck, which sends Steve straight into a panic. Bucky could drop girls with a wink and had a grin that might have easily launched a thousand ships. Which was fine, at least when it was Buck, but Steve doesn't know who the hell this Morrow kid is except he sounds like a troublemaker.

He doesn't tell Kat no, of course. He feels his general gripping fear that this kid will hurt her isn't justification enough for that. And besides, she has none of Steve's awkwardness, maybe because growing up the daughter of Captain America she hasn't been afforded it. When she talks about Robert Morrow she's collected like Peggy and doesn't blush once.

Despite the outward cool, Steve knows what it's like to get hit with the full force of attention that way.

The same week that That Troublemaker Morrow asks her out, Peggy teaches her how to throw a punch and the proper angle at which to take someone out at the kneecaps. Steve figures it's a fair trade. By the time Morrow turns up to pick up Kat for dinner and a movie, stammering and terrified of Captain America, Kathryn, looking very pretty and very, very young, is equipped with the knowledge of breaking his nose should he try anything.

Steve thinks this is enough stress to last him a lifetime and is vaguely relieved that Peggy had swiftly put her foot down after having one child.

A week later Kat's out at school, probably hanging around that Morrow kid again. Steve is trying and failing to make an edible lunch, distracted by the previous day's inconclusive debrief at SHIELD HQ about KGB activity when the program he's watching cuts out suddenly, replaced by the CBS logo.

President Kennedy's been shot.

He calls Peggy's office line directly and can't get through. He kills the oven and runs sixteen blocks to the Triskelion. Stark is there.

Steve spends three days asking what he can do. On the fourth, Stark tells him he's having a press conference. Johnson - President Johnson now (guess he got, says Buck's voice, what he was jonesing for so bad) - approved it. A PA presses a slim stack of notecards into Steve's hands. He reads a bunch of words to the reporters that mean very little to him. Steve assures everyone that they've caught the man who did it.

Peggy and Stark don't act like they've caught the man who did it. They work so late into the night that Steve generally turns in without her. For weeks he receives nothing. No crises, no orders. It's radio silence. Some people, maybe, remember stories from their grandparents about the day that Lincoln was killed, but by and large, no one has a single goddamn idea what's supposed to be done. They follow procedure best they can. Steve views the footage that SHIELD has procured of the assassination but it's whisked away before he can take a look at it frame-by-frame.

He thinks of the First Lady trying to climb away from her husband's body, her pink suit stained with blood and brains, for a long time.

It's after 2400 when Peggy gets home on the seventh day, Steve waiting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a book that he hasn't been reading, doesn't even know the title of.

When the door opens Steve sets it down on the table in front of him. Peggy walks in, brushing a wet snow from her coat. She hangs it up and gets almost to the stairs before spotting Steve in the kitchen. She stops and stands and they calculate one another openly, Peggy's head cocked to one side, Steve's hands folded atop the open book.