Me: I'm going to get back into writing fanfiction for a fun creative writing outlet, while I work on other humanities and social sciences in classwork :) Also me: Has now read at least one official medical study, multiple interest/support group and government reports, and several online testimonials re: House's possible amputation vs. non-narcotic pain treatments sans amputation, and now has a pretty good mental chart going of decidedly STEM things.

I have been tricked into researching STEM. Creative writing has betrayed me.

Aaahh yes thanks so much for answering the Steve headcanon ask! It was more than I could ever hope for really and I look forward to the Tony post! And please feel free to go on about Virgin Steve!! I'm insanely curious now haha I'll add the ☕ if that's what it takes! Are you still doing those??

Aw anon, thank you for this. Virgin Steve is one of my biggest and favorite headcanons, I’ll happily take the chance to ramble about it.

First though, I want to preface this by saying headcanons are just that - headcanons. No headcanon is inherently better than the other, and if you want to headcanon Steve as Brooklyn’s biggest slut or headcanon Steve having banged every single one of the USO girls, more power to you. I say this because sex/sexuality-related headcanons are a hot button on tumblr these days, and also because, with regards to Steve specifically, some people seem to immediately equate the idea of him being a virgin with the idea of him being a prude stammering boy scout, and this… bothers me a lot. It’s part of a specific trend of mischaracterization that’s not exclusive to Steve, but that affects him a lot, and that twists his character into something a lot edgier/””“cooler”’” than he actually is in canon, and that deems canon evidence of him being shy or awkward as invalid.

…This is gonna turn into an entirely different rant about how much this mischaracterization bothers me, so let me go back to the virginity.

The thing is, to me, that a lot a people seem to regard the thought of Steve being a virgin as a bad, humiliating condition to his character. And that bothers me a lot, because it expresses some pretty weird views on sexuality in general. Steve being a virgin doesn’t mean Steve is a goody two-shoes who’s gonna have a heart attack if someone swears in front of him. Steve being a virgin doesn’t mean he’s a prude, it doesn’t mean he’s gonna turn into a blushing stammering mess the moment Tony/Bucky/[insert here the character of your preference] waggles their eyebrows at him, it just means he hasn’t had sex yet. And that’s not bad or weird, it’s just… a thing that happens. Some people take longer than others to have sex. That’s not a bad thing, and it bothers me when people imply otherwise, for both personal and objective reasons.

With regards to Steve specifically, if we look at canon (and by “canon” I always mean “MCU canon”, just to be clear, because it’s the canon I engage with in my fandom life), I have no reason to believe he WOULDN’T be a virgin. If we’re thinking about canon Steve (aka, straight Steve), then there’s just not a moment in the mcu timeline where it seems likely that he had sex. In TFA, pre-serum Steve openly states that he’s never had luck or experience with women. By the way Peggy reacts with Lorraine macks on him, we can safely assume post-serum Steve was not getting on with a lot of ladies either (as Peggy had the impression that they were in a steady exclusive flirt). His kiss with Peggy pre-final battle is his first and only kiss with her, so he’s definitely a virgin by the time he’s frozen. In TWS, he refuses and is uncomfortable by Natasha’s suggestion that he casually dates someone; and then, when she teases him with the whole “was that your first kiss since 1945″ thing, he denies but doesn’t provide anything to actively counter that statement. The only moment I could see him losing his virginity would be to Sharon in between CW and IW (since they hook up for the first time in CW, they weren’t having sex between TWS and CW either), but that would be assuming they took their romance forward, which, given Steve’s fugitive status and Sharon’s absence in IW, seems unlikely.

Obviously, this is in the context of canon, straight Steve, and you’re more than free to imagine or write about Steve having tons of sex with Tony/Bucky/Sam/[insert here the male character of your preference], but to me, personally, virgin Steve just… makes sense, regardless of shipping lenses. His talk with Peggy in the car, to me, is the perfect illustration of why - this is, by his own admission, Steve’s first significant conversation with a woman he’s attracted to, and he essentially tells her, in so many words, that he is a virgin and waiting for The One. And not only he is not embarrassed, he’s so EARNEST about it that Peggy is clearly charmed. 

Like, seriously, look at him. Can you blame her?

And I just think that makes sense for Steve’s personality in general. Steve is a deeply private, reserved, repressed person in every sphere of his life, so to me, as a fan, it makes sense to assume that would be the case for his sexual life as well. I think by that scene we can see Steve takes romance seriously, it’s A Thing for him, he’s waiting for The Right Partner and not for the first pretty woman that gives him a chance. He doesn’t do casual dating, and I think it’s unlikely he’d do casual sex as well.

Then there’s the matter of physical intimacy, and that’s where we get deeper into headcanon territory with not much canon basis. Sex is something that puts you in a more vulnerable position by default, even if no feelings are involved, and Steve doesn’t really allow himself to be vulnerable, so it would be so significant when he choses to do that with someone. And you can even get into possible body issues - not necessarily body image exactly (unless we’re talking skinny Steve, of course), but post-serum, I think it would be hard to Steve to get used to this new body as his, and this new body as something that is a) attractive to other people and b) (most importantly) a possible means for his pleasure, too. Like, he leans how to use this new body as a weapon, but it’s a different level of ownership, I think, to use it for pleasure, and I think that would be something he could struggle with, because it would require a level of connection with this new body that fighting doesn’t necessarily require. So to get that experience with someone, to trust someone enough for that, would really be incredibly important to Steve, and it would help him to really feel his body as his.

Huh. Now I kind of want to read that fic.

Anyway! I’ve rambled a lot, but yeah, that is a favorite headcanon of mine and I wish more people would embrace it. Virgin Steve is love, Virgin Steve is life. I rest my case.