dragonlady7

via http://ift.tt/1NOCPBT:
I wrote this and I don’t know if I can use it in any of my WIPs. So here, have it here, for Bisexual Awareness Week. 

2400 words of Steve Rogers on a talk show dealing with manufactured shock value and what in fact his superpower really is. 

Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat, eyeing the girl on the couch next to his with no small trepidation. She was a pop star of some kind, a wholesome child star turned “bad girl”, and she was wearing what amounted to pasties and glitter booty shorts, her short hair spiked and her face gaudily glittered.

He’d been given instructions, and had showed up dressed as they wanted– jeans, and a t-shirt, and a buttoned shirt open over the top of that, with no logos on anything, plain leather shoes, no hat. The shirt was white, the buttoned shirt a blue plaid, the jeans blue, no loud colors. He’d added a red belt, because he’d figured someone was going to make a crack about his monotone outfit at some point. Being prepared for a punchline made it easier.

He had known as soon as he’d walked in and seen her that this girl was meant to shock him. She had given him a limp handshake and a languid-to-poorly-conceal-nervousness once-over, and he’d not squeezed her hand too hard and watched her decide he was judging her, as he carefully kept his eyes squarely above her neck and tried not to show any expression at all.

He was already exhausted.

So far nothing had really happened on the show; the girl and the host had talked first, and he was apparently the surprise guest, because they’d brought him out after a great deal of suspense and build-up. He’d been a little shocked at the extreme excitement of the crowd, but he supposed they really had pumped everybody up a lot about it. He could’ve been just about anybody, after that buildup, and he’d said so after the noise had died down, and they’d all denied it and the audience had gone nuts again, and he’d wondered if maybe they were collectively on something, or if there was a running joke he wasn’t in on.

So he was sitting next to the girl now, with a couple of feet of space between them, and as usual his body was too big for him and he had no idea where to put his knees and elbows and he knew that any awkwardness magnified itself about a hundred times on stage and a thousand more on camera, so everyone in the audience totally believed he was uncomfortable and disapproving of this girl and that was what it was, and not the fact that he was waiting for the inevitable moment he became the punchline.

“But you wouldn’t have listened to my album,” the girl said, reaching out and touching his arm. “You don’t like modern music.”

Steve gave her a look of surprise. “I like plenty of modern music,” he said. “I mean, I missed a lot, so I haven’t gotten around to everything yet.” He leaned over, reaching across her, which shocked her genuinely, and plucked the case of her album off the host’s desk, where they’d been discussing it. “I got this one on my list, I think,” he said, examining the cover art as he ignored her reaction. “If I’d known I was gonna be on here with you I woulda bumped it up to the top. I try to intersperse the new ones with the classic ones, y’know?”

“Really,” the host said. “Well, what do you like best?”

“I like that there’s so much variety,” Steve said. He was good at this. He could do aw-shucks enthusiasm about the modern world. “I have friends who make me playlists, friends with really good taste– but the other thing I like is how much everyone cares about music, and how much you can tell about people by what music they care about. Everyone loves making me playlists, and I love it when I can tell that someone really put a ton of themselves into making this playlist.”

“What about if the playlist sucks, though,” the girl said, and Steve laughed.

“I try not to think about it like that,” he said. “I try to think more that this is a person with a very different outlook than me, and even if none of it is to my taste I can still get something out of the experience.”

“You like to play nice,” she said. She was– aw, shit, she was definitely on drugs to cover up how nervous she was, and that was going to make this much more difficult.

“I try,” Steve said. “In my job, a lot of the time, I don’t really get to, you know? You don’t get to sit down and talk out your differences all nice when somebody’s got a death ray or killer robots or aliens or something. You just kinda have to punch things indiscriminately. So I generally like to play nice whenever I got the choice.” He shrugged. “You, though, you probably don’t have to punch people so much, so there’s likely a lot more temptation to do it in everyday life.”

“That’s true,” she said, a little surprised. “I guess if I had to punch people it’d take some of the shine off it.”

“It really does,” Steve said, laughing mostly in relief at having dodged becoming a punchline for the moment.

The host asked him about his job, and he gave her the standard, well-rehearsed line about the restructuring of SHIELD and the next phase of the Avengers Initiative and all of that.

“Wait,” the popstar said when there was a pause, and put her hand on his arm again. And it wasn’t the lascivious way women sometimes did, where they were feeling his bicep like a piece of meay– she sort of seemed to be checking if he was really there. Her fingers were cold and dry and light like an insect. “You’re a superhero, right? What’s your superpower?”

He had a standard line that he always gave, but as he looked at her he thought better of it. He laughed, instead. “You know,” he said, “I don’t have one. I got an official spec sheet and all but what it really boils down to is, I don’t have a superpower.”

The popstar stared at him. She wasn’t stupid, he could see her working that over behind the flat sheen of the drugs she was on. “I figured you guys picked a leader by who could beat everybody else up,” she said.

Steve laughed. “No,” he said. “We don’t really have time for that kind of thing. And you know, there’s a lot more to what we do than just beating people up.”

“So could you beat up Iron Man?” she asked.

“That’s a really great question,” the host said.

“That’s a terrible question,” Steve said. “I couldn’t beat up Iron Man, not in the suit. Outta the suit, no doubt, if it’s a fair fight, but Tony Stark has never been in a fair fight. That’s what you get when you have an engineering genius. And that’s why he’s on the team, y’know? Because he’s smart enough not to step to a genetically-engineered super soldier for a fair fistfight, he’d come up with something smarter before I’d even get there.”

“What about Black Widow?” the popstar asked. “Could you beat her up?”

“He wouldn’t hit a woman,” the host said.

Steve shook his head. “I’ve hit plenty of women,” he said. “I was raised by one, you know, and she taught me never to underestimate anybody, and that includes women. As far as beating up Black Widow, I hope to Christ I never have to. I don’t know if I could. We spar all the time, but I don’t think either of us has truly ever tried to hurt the other.”

“Did you two ever bang?” the popstar asked; he’d watched her eyes glaze over with disinterest in his answer. She was here to provoke; she was doing her job, and his every failure to rise to the bait was only making it worse.

“I don’t think he knows that turn of phrase,” the host said as the audience reaction died down, and there was another reaction.

Steve pried his teeth out of his lip. “I do, actually,” he said. “I understood the question. And I understand why people ask it. But you know, I can’t get over it. My mom marched to get women the right to vote, and a hundred years later all anyone wants to know about the most famous woman on my team is who she’s– banging. Natasha is such a good fighter, such a brave person, such a talented strategist, among the most intelligent people in this entire world– and I mean, to an extent nobody even knows, she’s that smart– and is such a fiercely loyal friend, probably the single most reliable person in my life right now, but to the world at large she’s just an object in a catsuit.”

“Yo,” the popstar said, but she had nothing beyond that, and the audience was reacting uproariously, and the host was egging them on, and the moment was swept on forward in a sea of chatter.

When it died down again, Steve saw her getting ready for her next onslaught of fake controversy. He wanted to interrupt her, but it would be rude to the host, who was still exclaiming over things. Instead, he braced himself.

“So are you gay, then?” the popstar asked. The uproar was huge, and Steve weathered it expressionless, because there was no point reacting. As it died down, she continued, and he let her, heart hammering in his chest. There was no right answer here. “I grew up just figuring you and Bucky were gay for each other and it meant a lot to me because I’m queer, but here you are and you’ve never taken a stand on it either way.”

A ruckus swept through the audience, but they hushed quickly. Steve breathed, and composed himself so his voice would come out neutral. He knew where the question was coming from.
“You know,” he said, “I’ve encountered that in writings– there was a novelization that popularized the notion, and a movie, where Bucky and I were– I get it, I’ve watched it, that’s definitely a thing. And I’ve heard people say it was inspirational to them, and I’m glad of that.”

“But you’re not gay,” the popstar interrupted, face twisting.

“Hang on,” Steve said, “I’m not there yet. Here’s the thing, Bucky was a real person and I was a real person and it wasn’t like the book or the movie, it was real life, and it wasn’t…” The girl looked bored and sullen, and the host was clearly waiting to interrupt, and he shoved on to finish the sentence. “We weren’t anybody’s poster boys of anything, back then, and I can’t–”

“So, no,” the popstar said, flat and bored and– no, bitter.

“Let me finish,” Steve said, with a flash of exasperation. “Here’s the thing. I am queer.” He hadn’t planned for this, but anything less was a lie.

There was stunned silence. “Did you say,” the host attempted.

“I am– whatever label you wanna put on that,” Steve said, “we used to defiantly call ourselves queer, if we dared to call ourselves anything, and it’s meant a lot of things since then but it’s still the same thing. I loved Peggy Carter, with all my heart, like a man loves a woman, but I loved Bucky Barnes too, not quite the same way but pretty much, the way a boy loves another boy with his whole heart and all kinds of things he doesn’t understand– and I don’t have a cute or clever tagline for it, I don’t have a rehearsed line or a reasoned PR stance or anything, that’s just the truth and I guess that’s my superpower. I tell the truth.”

The host was openly gaping. The popstar stared at him.

“Wait,” she said, and it was plaintive, soft– “really?”

And that was her, that wasn’t the drugs, that wasn’t the instructions she’d been given, that wasn’t her trying to hustle some controversy to feed the gaping maw of popular interest in a vain quest to stay relevant beyond whatever spotlight her scant talents and good connections had earned her. That was her.

“Really,” Steve said. “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing and I didn’t see any way for it not to end in disaster, but I loved that boy more than I loved myself, and I still do.” There was ringing silence in the room, and he took a breath and went on.

“It wasn’t anything like the movies, I couldn’t even recognize myself in that book– nobody’s ever gotten it anything like right. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true, down in the core of it. That doesn’t mean that all the little queer boys and girls who held me in their hearts like a secret were wrong.”

The popstar was staring at him and her eyes were huge, and he realized with some dismay that there were tears welling. “It’s true?” she said, faint and wavering.

“It’s true,” he said. “As Captain America, it doesn’t matter, doesn’t really affect anything I do. But as Steve Rogers, it’s everything, it’s who I am. I was a weird lonely queer little kid with a crush on his best friend and nobody to tell me that it was normal and okay. If I can be an example to other weird lonely queer little kids, maybe make them less lonely, then I couldn’t be happier about it.”

Tears spilled down her beglittered cheeks, and before he could think better of it, Steve reached out and pulled the tiny half-naked woman into an embrace.

“It’s okay,” he said, and she was a cold, frail weight in his arms, shoving her face into his chest, shaking with a sob. “It’s okay,” he said. He put his hand around the back of her head, smoothing down the soft-shaven part of her hair. “You’re not weird and you don’t have to be lonely.”