A/N: Captain America (MCU) + bigender.
Our Third Introduction
Steve saw her across a crowded room and he completely stopped. She had her hair up, a loose top on, the metal arm casually covered, and someone was a dab hand with make-up because she looked… Well, she was stunning. And she was also Bucky—so very Bucky, the same one Steven had grown up with, but there was no mistaking her for anything but herself.
He heard people call her Jamie and went over to introduce himself.
"Hi," she said as they shook hands. A flutter of her eyes signaled uncertainty for a brief moment, but then she smiled warmly at him and they moved into conversation as though nothing had changed.
He saw her several more times that week, but by their third meeting (in an amusing little café on West 134th), Steve wasn't fazed anymore. She was firmly her in his head now. Trans Jamie. And it was hard to imagine her as anything else: this was who she was, so clearly and confidently and beautifully.
He was proud of her, and wished he could tell her that without it being awkward, but she hadn't brought up gender, so he wasn't going to either. Months ago, he told her this century's attitudes were different about gender and relationships, and to maybe spend some time in the culture and see whether her own views changed.
Her views definitely changed.
He was so happy for her—for both of them—living in this age they weren't born into but which allowed them to come out and be themselves.
Steve was at a house party of Sam's when he saw her again, only this time—
It jarred Steve so much.
Because she was a he. It was wrong, so wrong on her. He'd seen her out, happy, proud, free; and now here she was cramming herself in a box again? Why? Didn't she get it that people wouldn't care? If anyone ever had a problem with Jamie being who she was—well, she could handle herself, but Steve would defend her too.
People still called her Jamie. But Jamie as a man, not Jamie as a woman.
All night Steve watched her across the room and wondered. Wondered if this could even be the same Jamie he spent the week with—as if his childhood friend Bucky had an identical twin he never knew about. People kept cornering him and he couldn't get to her, until finally the party thinned and he caught up to her by a window, a glass of wine in her hand, wearing that little half-smile that was her trademark.
"Are you okay?" Steve asked, quiet.
Jaime frowned, jerking her head in confusion.
"You." Steve nodded to her. "You're hiding."
When the aha lit her eyes, Jamie looked out the window, eyes searching up until she found the moon through the tree limbs.
"You've always been blunt, haven't you, Steve?" she teased, voice soft.
"What's wrong?" he asked her.
"Nothing."
He shifted closer to her. "You can't tell me that when you're not yourself. I'm you're oldest friend."
"You're certainly the most attractive eighty-year-old I know," she smirked.
"Jamie. Seriously. What's going on?"
"Nothing." She looked over at him. "I'm still me, Steve. This is me, too. I'm not just her; I'm a him, too."
"…What?" he stuttered, reaching out and touching the warmth of Jamie's skin-and-bones arm. It grounded him, let him breathe.
"I'm bigender."
It took a moment of Steve blinking at Jamie for the word to make sense.
"Like how you're bisexual," Jamie enunciated slowly, eyebrows up. "Bi means two. I'm a man and a woman."
"Yeah, I get it."
"Good." Jamie shifted under Steve's hand so that he could grip Steve's forearm. "Stop thinking so hard, you big idiot. You look like you're going to strain something."
"Me?" The corner of Steve's mouth tipped up. "Who's the one who almost gets h—himself killed wherever he goes?"
He only stumbled a little over the masculine pronoun. It dropped into place, the old connections of his brain taking over and saying, yes, we know this Jamie. Jamie Barnes the man: we know him.
Jamie's laugh broke the remaining tension and Steve joined in. He'd figure this out: it hadn't been that hard to adjust to Jamie the woman, and switching back to Jamie the man—he could do it.
He'd figure out how to think of her as both.
On the one hand, because he knew it was possible—he'd adjusted to all the other gender identities he'd encountered in this century—and on the other, because this was Jamie Barnes, the person he cared about above all others.
A/N: Comments keep me going!