Always be something to fight for I'll always be a soldier

“Tony can be a real ass, but no one could accuse him of a lack of generosity,” she agreed.  If anything, he had been known for a tendency towards throwing money at any problem he couldn’t blow up.

“You know, I got to see some of your old sketches a long time ago, before you were recovered.  Dr Erskine had a few loose pages in amongst his notes, they found their way into the old SSR files with everything he had on your serum.”  She turned another page, after feeling consistently unattractive over the past few months as her body changed, the different perspective felt incredible to her.  “These are beautiful.”

“That part was easy.  You are beautiful.  Not sure I captured it completely but I gave it my best shot.”  He put his heart there in the sketches and perhaps that had been part of why he hadn’t really drawn since the War.   He didn’t feel heart-whole.

She swept her hair over one shoulder so that it wouldn’t be in the way.  “I think that ideally, a home has the things you want most.  So family, loved ones, sure.  But I’ll never discount the value of space, and knowing it belongs to you, and that you aren’t in danger of losing it.  It’s why I kept that apartment, in spite of Tony ignoring my disgrace and offering me a room at Avengers Tower.”  She made a face, references to her disgrace were generally tongue in cheek these days.  Even though they hadn’t discussed it, she had a feeling Tony knew that her ejection from the Avengers had been a miscarriage of justice.

She flicked over the page so that she could start looking through Steve’s work.

Steve’s arms tightened around her for a moment.  “I’m sorry that all happened to you.  But I’m glad that Tony offered you a place.  He’s a good guy that way.”  Bobbi deserved whatever she needed to make this new place her home.   He intended to make sure she got it.  Nothing and no one would be able to take that away from her.

She gave a small smile and nodded with a grateful sigh, though she was a little reluctant to move off his lap.  She shifted, stood, and traded spots for him.  “Ooh, I like getting to pick things.”  She grinned.  She had the craving to prepare the nest that she had been informed came with pregnancy, but since there was a lot of fumey work being done, she kept telling herself that the vaccine was essential to preparing for baby.

“Actually living in my own home will be novel.  I used to spend that much time off on assignment with the team.”  The team that she still hadn’t told her boys involved Coulson.  “Working on the Bus, various espionage, I had a really nice apartment in New York but I only spent a few weeks a year there.”  She reached for Steve’s sketch book.

Steve didn’t stop her from taking the sketch book.  While he might feel a bit self conscious at times about his work he hoped that Bobbi could see how beautiful she looked in his sketches.   The various stages of her pregnancy.  Interaction with both others and the space around her.   Nothing he would want to hide.

“Steve you never had fucking polio-”

“YEA BUT IT STILL SUCKED! KNOW WHAT STOPPED IT?! VACCINES!”

“Steve, that’s… That’s not really a good argument.”

“I DON’T CARE FOX NEWS NEEDS TO STOP USING MY IMAGE!”

“Steve, doll, calm down.”

Capitalism sucks, no human is illegal, STOP BEING RACIST, muslims are not terrorists, women can have all the sex they want and that’s none of your business, homeless people are NOT criminal, vaccinations should be mandatory, I’m a flaming homosexual and I should be able to marry who I want and not worry about getting fired for it, rapists should be shot, people should be able to live off of their income without working 3 jobs, and access to appropriate healthcare should be a right not a privilege. Thank you. Oh, and one last thing-

So, wow.  Yeah.  Another one of those “I’ve been reading a lot of.. and.. (insert my opinion here).”

So, yes,  I keep reading about Bucky as the ladies man: all sexed up and such.  It’s a bit baffling to me, as this is a very modern way of thinking.  Dating - or courtship - was very different in the 30’s and 40’s than it is today!

For example, take this excerpt from A Brief History of Courtship and Dating in America, (Part 2):

Beth Bailey and Ken Myers explain in the Mars Hill Audio Report, Wandering Toward the Altar: The Decline of American Courtship, before World War II, American youth prized what Bailey calls a promiscuous popularity, demonstrated through the number and variety of dates a young adult could command, sometimes even on the same night.

In the late 1940s, Margaret Mead, in describing this pre-war dating system, argued that dating was not about sex or marriage. Instead, it was a “competitive game,” a way for girls and boys to demonstrate their popularity.

This describes a situation in which dating was more about one’s reputation than any sort of romance.  It was very important not only to be seen with many dates, but with the proper people.  This explains why Steve would have had such a difficult time securing a partner: being seen with someone unpopular was worse than not being seen at all.  However, this gives us a clue as to how popular Bucky must have been!  If he was able to leverage himself in order to get Steve dates, Bucky must have been pretty high-ranking on the dating scale.

For men, desirable dating traits included a good personality and dance skills, as well as being “tactful, amusing, well dressed, prompt, and courteous” (Great Depression and the Middle Class…).  Lasciviousness was not a good quality!  Women communicated with one another concerning a man’s suitability, so for Bucky to have been popular he couldn’t have been the sex-centric playboy that fans like to imagine.  It’s far more likely that he was well-spoken, funny, charming, and a great dancer.  Remember, Bucky was from the lower classes, so he wouldn’t have had the money - despite the Depression, it was expected that men pay for the entire date (barring Sadie Hawkins themed events and once a couple started to go steady) - to impress women with a car and fancy clothes, nor would he have been able to take them out to dinner, so his dance skills would have been pretty important!  

In fact, dancing was such a popular form of entertainment that, in one year, the University of Michigan fraternities held over 300 evening dances!

According to this web page “young people in the 1930s dated and double-dated by going to movies, getting something to eat, going for ice cream, driving around, spending time with friends, going to dances, and even ‘necking.’”  That’s right folks, necking.  Not fucking.  

Women were expected to straddle a fine line between being too forward or too “frigid,” both of which could harm their reputations.  Young people engaged in kissing, necking, and petting (meaning anything short of full intercourse).  Petting was becoming more common - due, in part, to rising automobile-culture - as was sex itself; heavier petting typically came from going-steady, and engagement “came… to mean that partners would at some point ‘go all the way’” (Teen Culture in the 1930’s).  Ladies who were known to be free with their sexuality prior to commitment were in danger of being known for exactly that, and could easily become popular merely as a means to an end (the wrong kind of popularity).

So, it likely wouldn’t have been hard for Bucky, as a popular young man, to find a willing partner (and I’m certainly not suggesting that he was virginal).  However, if he were the sort of man to focus on easy women, it’s not likely that he would maintain his own high rating (which, again, we can guess at by the fact that he was able to not only secure himself dates, but Steve as well).