A/N: Hard to believe that skinny Steve couldn't get a girl when he was so cute and such a gentleman.
The Dating Game
"You're so thoughtful, Steve. I don't know why girls didn't like you back in the day," Darcy Lewis said, as she finished putting away the groceries that Steve had carried six miles for her.
Steve Rogers blinked at her. "Girls liked me," he protested, at the same time Bucky Barnes said, "Girls liked Steve just fine."
Darcy looked at the duo oddly.
"But you've said you never had any dates, except when Bucky set you up," she pointed out.
"Oh ... but that's different," Steve said, as if that was obvious. Bucky nodded along, as if it was obvious to him, too.
Darcy sat at the counter and rested her chin on her arm. "OK, I don't get it. What's the dif?"
The two men from the 1930s exchanged a glance. Bucky shrugged. "Kids. They think the only difference between then and now is the technology."
"And fashion," Darcy chirped brightly.
The men gave her a look. She laughed.
"Look, I was a political science major, remember. I know that attitudes were different. Men mistakenly thought they were superior. Whites foolishly believed that Blacks were inferior. Gays had to hide their love. And so on."
"Maybe you've read it in a book, but that doesn't mean you understand," Bucky said kindly.
"What's it got to do with dating?" Darcy asked.
"Dating was new when we were teens," Steve said.
It boggled Darcy's mind to think that the Dark Ages extended right up to the 20th century. "So, you had what? Arranged marriages?" She was incredulous.
"My grandmother had an arranged marriage," Bucky said. "Grandfather Barnes was a real bastard, from what everyone said. His father owned a store, so he looked like a good match when grandmother's father set up the marriage. But grandfather was a drunk and ran the store into bankruptcy after his father died. Then he only worked off and on as a laborer and mostly lived on what grandmother made as a laundress. He took all her money and drank it away, then beat her for not having more. His lovemaking was more like rape and when she got pregnant, he beat her more because he didn't want to spend money on kids. She had three miscarriages before my father was born, miraculously healthy. When Dad was a crawling baby, his father kicked him aside like a dog. Dad had a permanent limp all his life, just a small one but a constant reminder of his father."
"Fortunately, Bucky's grandfather went to work drunk and was killed by falling crates. Best thing that ever happened to her, Grandma Barnes said," Steve said. "She worked her way up to head laundress at a big hotel, then opened her own laundry. She made decent money, raised her son to respect women and was a fierce suffragist."
"She was terrifying," Bucky agreed with a fond smile.
Darcy was horrified. "And the police and the church and everyone just let him beat your grandmother."
Steve laughed without humor. "Darcy, I always shake my head when I hear about gays wanting to get married and other people protesting about the 'sanctity' of marriage. For hundreds of years, marriage was just a contract to transfer ownership of a woman from her father to her husband. She had no rights. Anything she earned belonged to him, including her children, and he could kill her and them with impunity."
"Why do you think the father 'gives the bride away' at a wedding," Bucky said cynically, drawing a horrified look from Darcy.
"Of course, not everyone abused the privilege. Maybe we were just heavily influenced in our childhood by Gramma Barnes," Steve said fairly.
Bucky laughed, "Maybe so," he agreed. "She was a woman of strong opinions," he told Darcy. "And she wanted to make sure her little men grew up to respect women."
"According to Gramma, things began to change around the turn of the century," Steve said. "A woman had more say in her life, but still, most women were set up by their families. Two families would know each other and think their children would make a good match. Or a man would know about a woman and approach her father for permission to court her. That's how my parents met," Steve said. "He saw her at church and approached her parents. My grandparents' house was small, no parlor for a courting couple, so he and my mother 'went out,' usually just to the park to listen to a concert at the bandstand or to a local cafe for lunch. And to church on Sunday, of course."
"It sounds very respectable," Darcy said, making a face.
"It was respectable," Steve said. "Mother didn't have an old aunt to go along as chaperone, but everyone in the neighborhood knew them. If father had set a foot wrong, someone would have told her parents. But they behaved and got married and had a couple of weeks together before America was drawn into the Great War and father was called up. He died in the trenches and never saw his son."
"This is really depressing," Darcy pointed out. "And doesn't have anything to do with girls not wanting to date you."
"This is just the background," Steve said. "What you think of as dating — men and women going out dancing or to movies with no sense of a chaperone — that pretty much started after the Great War — World War I — when so many fathers and eligible men were killed. Women had to work to survive. They had to meet men on their own. Women had choices," Steve said. "And they didn't chose me."
"I still don't get it," Darcy said. "Maybe you were short, but lots of women are shorter. Your sweet personality didn't change or your pretty face." She grabbed Steve's face and pinched his cheeks, while she made grandmotherly kissing noises.
Bucky didn't try very hard to smother his laughter. Steve pulled away in mock irritation, but couldn't hide his smile.
"You're missing the point, doll," Bucky said. "Girls liked Steve. He held doors open for them. Carried groceries. Fed their cats when they went out of town, even though cats made him sneeze. But they didn't want to date him."
"The point of dating was to find a man to marry," Steve said. "And since they'd already crossed me off as husband material, no one who knew me wanted to date me."
Darcy looked like she wanted to protest.
"You can't tell me it's not true today," Bucky said shrewdly. "I've seen those commercials for online dating sites. They all talk about engagement rings and permanent relationships."
"Not everybody wants to pair up right away," Darcy argued. "Some girls just want to have fun — I'm not necessarily talking about sex, just a drink, some dinner, a little relief from the daily grind."
Steve nodded. "And that takes money, which I didn't have either. If I'd had Howard Stark's millions, I probably could have had any girl I wanted, but I didn't. I was short, sick and poor."
"Three strikes and you're out," Bucky agreed.
Darcy frowned thoughtfully at the guys. "I think you're missing something," she decided. "You did have double dates, when Bucky set you up."
"Yeah, and the girls were always more interested in Buck," Steve agreed.
Bucky looked a little ashamed. "If you'd just tried to hold a conversation," he said.
"That was your problem, Steve," Darcy decided. "It wasn't social history or personal wealth. Look, throughout history there have been women who loved the unhealthy artistic types, women who worked to support them while they obsessed over their art and coughed out their tubercular lungs in drafty Paris attics. Motherly, self-sacrificing women. Left to yourself, that's the type of woman you would have attracted. But the kind of woman who liked big, buff Bucky Barnes wasn't going to fall for sick, skinny Steve Rogers." Darcy spoke with decision. "Your problem wasn't women, Steve. Your problem was that Barnes was a lousy wing man."
A/N: It's funny how most of these conversations seem to take place in the kitchen.
