Title: Work Up a Sweat
Fandom: MCU/Captain America
Rating: R
Length: 904
Content notes: WARNING: References to homophobia of the 1940s and in-the-closet characters.
Author notes: For fan-flashworks.
Summary: Set pre-Captain America in Brooklyn. Steve knows he needs to try something new after watching Bucky work out. Unrequited and possibly one-sided Steve/Bucky.



The blue shop was only a few blocks away, but Steve was still hoping he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew. And there was also the cops to worry about, in case they decided to do a raid; Steve wouldn’t have a chance at running fast enough to get away.

Some jerks might decide to just pick on Steve if they saw the shop he entered too, but Steve wasn’t worried about a fight. If he got into something, he would just make up something to tell Bucky.

His heartbeat quickened as he got closer to the shop. There was no sign on the front, but he’d seen men go in, the same men who went to those clubs that Steve knew about but had never gone to.

Steve was nervous, he had to admit. But he screwed up his courage and kept walking, thinking of what had brought him here.

Bucky had gotten his own place and finally convinced him to move in. A tiny little room, too hot in the summer swelter, but it was theirs. It was nice, to have Bucky always there, always just a few feet away.

Nice, but difficult.

Last night, Bucky had hung up a punching bag, saying it was the only way they could exercise in such a small place. Steve had sat on his bed and watched as Bucky worked the bag, footwork and punches, jabs and hooks, until he was covered in glistening sweat. After, he collapsed on the floor right next to Steve, a line of skin showing between his white undershirt and shorts. The aroma of his body, the sight, made Steve desperate to lean down, to run his fingers over the sweat-slick skin on his stomach.

He didn’t. He decided to come to the shop instead.

When he walked in, he was greeted with a smile by the man at the register. He smiled back nervously and started to look around.

It wasn’t just dirty magazines. It was all sorts of things. Sculptures of body parts, leather straps and cuffs, whips, all sorts of things. Steve swallowed. He was starting to feel in over his head.

“Can I help you find something?” the man at the register said, walking toward him.

Steve shook his head no.

“It’s all right,” the man prodded.

Steve hesitated, then said, mouth dry, “Pictures.”

“Sure, there’s this section for magazines.”

Steve looked around at the magazines, thin stapled booklets of photographed men, naked, sometimes aroused, sometimes not. Some of the men were extremely muscular, with hard masculine faces and arms like overstuffed sausages, and some were slender feminine men. None of them quite looked anything like Bucky.

The only dirty magazines Steve had ever looked at were of girls, always because Bucky was willing to share. Steve had always looked at them with fascination, having little knowledge of what girls really looked like beneath their dresses (and the fact that Bucky had previously looked at these same pictures, had worked himself while holding the very same pages, had only added to the pleasure). But he didn’t feel like these magazines full of men had too much to do with what a lot of guys looked like, and he wondered if the same were true of the magazines full of ladies.

He must have looked dissatisfied, because the man working there told him then, “And if you’re interested, art books are over there.”

“Art books?”

“For fancy stuff.”

Steve didn’t realize there would be art books. He nodded his thanks and then walked over.

There were books full of pictures there, but none could be found in a regular bookstore: there were prints of paintings, and lots of sketches. A book full of paintings of men wearing nothing but masks. A book full of photographs of men in old-timey suits having sex with men dressed like women. A book full of sketches of the male body, in all its intimate details, done lovingly despite its explicitness; Steve was impressed with the realism, the craftsmanship of it (it was of course far too expensive). And a book of prints of paintings of orgies, all done in the modern style, seemingly by someone hoping to copy Matisse.

Steve kept looking, occasionally looking around. If this were a newsstand, he’d have been yelled at many times over for looking without buying, but the man who worked here was leaving him alone, and none of the other customers seemed too interested in what he was doing.

Finally, he found a couple of postcards of sketches, pretty affordable compared to the other materials. Simple line drawings, clean and spare, but with a liveliness to them. The artist was good, and the man in the drawings was brunet and similar to Bucky in body type. One was of the man lying on a bed, touching himself, head back and eyes closed in rapture. The other was of a couple, the brunet bent over as a man stood behind him, nothing but his legs and groin in the frame, erect and just an inch away from the other man’s rear end, looking as if he were about to enter.

Steve took the postcards to the register, fished out his coins to pay, and forced himself to look the man in the eye to say “Good afternoon” when he left.

He spent the entire walk home trying to figure out where in his apartment he would hide his purchase.