Peter eased open the door to the common room, wincing as it squeaked slightly. He’d just gotten back to the compound from Pride, and was hoping to head straight for the showers. Only a few of the Avengers knew he was a transgender man, and it wasn’t like Peter was hiding it, it just...hadn’t come up. He rounded the corner and saw Steve’s form hunched over at the breakfast bar, scribbling on a legal pad with colorful markers and a look of intense focus that could only mean one thing: nightmares. Peter moved to cover up the pride flag on his cheek but stopped short, figuring if he crawled over Steve he wouldn’t even notice.
Let’s just say mistakes were made.
Mistake number one was thinking he could sneak past a WWII-trained, PTSD-riddled veteran with super-hearing.
Mistake number two was forgetting his webs as he fell the full twelve feet from ceiling to floor, startled by Steve catapulting from his seat to Barton’s ledge in far too few movements.
“Kid-Peter-what the fuck .”
“Sorry, Steve, I just, uh, got home.” Peter blushed, suddenly embarrassed. Steve’s eyes zeroed in on the flag on Peter’s cheek and oh, here we go, homophobic veteran time.
“What’s that one mean?” Steve leaped down from the ledge and leaned against the kitchen island, eyes still focused on the small block of colors. Peter started at the choice of words. That one . So maybe not homophobic, maybe...curious?
“Well, uh, this one means transgender-like you used to be one gender identity, and now you’re the other. Well, another, but usually it’s male to female or female to male.”
Steve nodded carefully, brow furrowing. Not the eyebrows of disappointment, Peter noted, but thoughtful ones.
“And there are-there’s other ones too? Like, gay, lesbian, right?”
“Uh, yeah, there’s a lot, actually,” Peter started, taking Steve’s abandoned seat at the counter.
“It’s like a spectrum, moving from straight to gay, with bisexuality and pansexuality landing somewhere around the middle. Oh, and aromantic and asexual, too.”
Steve straightened suddenly.
“Those two, in the middle, what do those ones mean?”
“Well, bisexual is defined as attraction to two or more genders, and pansexual is attraction to all genders, so it’s sorta a rectangle-square situation, I guess.”
Steve nodded again, eyes lost in a sea of thought.
“And then there’s gender identities, like a spectrum again, except from cisgender to transgender. So, like, you’d be cisgender. One gender, never thought of being another. And I’m transgender, where I was another gender but not really, not inside. There’s all sorts in between, stuff like genderfluid and gender-neutral.”
Steve made a little hum, looking up at Peter and scrubbing a hand over his face, exhaling loudly and-nervously?.
“So if someone were, um, bisexual, that means they could be attracted to men and women?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Wonder why he went back to that one?
“And that’s-normal, now?”
“I mean, for some people. We’re kind of realizing that sexuality isn’t as, uhh, strictly molded as people once made it seem. My friend Michelle says that we’re all a little gay inside.” Peter laughed, remembering the look on Flash’s face when Michelle said that during fifth-period bio.
“And the flag for that one, what’s it look like?”
Peter reached for the pens and the legal pad, flipping the scribble-page over and trying not to look at it. “It’s like this,” he said, drawing a pink rectangle stacked on a purple rectangle stacked on a blue rectangle.
“See, the pink and blue represent the ‘traditional’ colors associated with the main two genders, and the purple is the blending of the two. Symbolic shit is big in the pride flag department, trust me.”
Steve laughed, gazing down at the small block of colors like they held all the answers in the world, confusing Peter even more as he searched his mind for any “CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS GAY” lessons from World History.
“Hey Stevie, you still up? Oh, hey, kid.” Bucky walked into the room, and holy shit . Peter couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, but Steve’s entire face changed when he looked at Bucky. Maybe it was the softening in the eyes, or the dropping of a near-century of shadows from the shoulders, or the jaw relaxing from grim line into gentle smile. Whatever it was, everything suddenly made sense. The questions, the phrasing, the flag.
Steve Rogers was head-over-heels in love with Bucky Barnes.
And from the way Bucky gazed back, it seemed the feeling was mutual.
Maybe Peter should wear pride flags home more often.