The whole thing is the television's fault.

The Soldier doesn't tend to seek out television. He is busy with things such as learning not to be a weapon, regaining his memories, and living in Tony Stark's tower without regressing and killing all the other occupants.

Sometimes that is very difficult.

His days are spent mostly in therapy sessions and informative lessons, to regain the language he's lost in decades of mostly silence and to bring him to speed on the history he can't quite remember shaping. When he has time to himself—the thought of having anything for himself is intoxicating and terrifying—he tends to read or listen to the radio. Those were the things Barnes did, and the Soldier seeks to become Barnes.

Neither the radio nor the books of this era make much sense at all, but the television is uniquely frustrating. With books, he can set the pace. Television is as fast as the radio, but in this century the radio is nearly all music, whereas television expects him to follow narratives. The Soldier struggles with casual conversations, so grasping rapid, referential dialogue and multiple plotlines simultaneously is far beyond his current capabilities.

And most television is what his therapists call triggering.

At best, some programs are tolerable. (JARVIS taught him that word and the Soldier had been sure to write it down, as it is very useful). There is one show about aliens who don't understand the world any better than he does, which is nice except for the disconcerting, disembodied laughter that frequently interrupts the narrative. And then there is the news. News programs are not unlike mission briefings, albeit far less detailed and spread over too many topics.

Bruce is watching the news when the Soldier joins him. The Soldier had been reading the first book in a series Clint loaned him, but he doesn't understand fantasy well enough to wrap his mind around the concept of wizarding school, and nor does he comprehend why he should care that he is "most definitely Hufflepuff."

Steve and the others are on a mission. Bruce is doing what Tony refers to as Soldier-sitting. They take turns and each time their team is called away, someone remains with him. The Soldier does not think it necessary, but being looked after is oddly reassuring.

As usual, the Soldier ends up tilting his head as he watches the broadcast. The news makes more sense than most television, but only relatively. He doesn't understand why there are so many reports about celebrities. He doesn't understand what a celebrity is.

The Soldier clears his throat. He knows he is allowed to speak now without waiting for permission, but knowing and understanding are not always the same thing.

"Yeah, Bucky?"

"What's a celebrity?"

Bruce looks up from his tablet—he has only been half-watching—as he answers. "It's a famous person."

"Famous for what?"

"That's a real good question," Bruce murmurs, pushing his glasses up on his nose. He begins to explain about acting and singing and scandalous video tapes, but there is another news item and the Soldier automatically snaps back to attention.

The report is about gay marriage, and for a moment the Soldier thinks he's heard wrong. Gay means happy. Marriages are meant to be about love, so theoretically shouldn't they all be gay? Or…there's something in the back of his mind, some other meaning of the word he can't quite recall.

"What is gay?" the Soldier asks.

Bruce, who is still trying to explain celebrities, does not look annoyed at the interruption. He never looks annoyed no matter how many questions the Soldier has, which is pleasant. "Uh, do you know what homosexuality means?"

Weapons do not have sexuality. The Soldier has spent seventy years as a weapon and anything before that is a blur. With HYDRA, he remembers that the stress and adrenaline of missions would occasionally induce arousal in some agents. They would disappear into a safe house bathroom or other secluded space to deal with their biology, sometimes alone and sometimes together. He thinks he once walked past two agents pressing their mouths together. Were those things a display of sexuality, or only situational? Is sexuality situational?

He must take too long to answer because Bruce is pulling up webpages on the tablet. "Here," he says, handing the device to the Soldier. "Let me know if anything doesn't make sense."

The Soldier reads about the spectrum of human sexuality and the evolution of the word gay from its twelfth century roots to the present. He reads about Alfred Kinsey, the Stonewall Riots, and the implementation and repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He is reading about the Gay Liberation Front when the memories begin.

Steve was not his only friend in the time before the fall. There had been others and one of them was named Arnie Roth. He had been Steve's friend as well—most of Barnes's friends had been Steve's friends, and vice versa—but he spent more time with Barnes, because the two of them would take women on dates together regularly. Arnie, he thinks, had not really been interested in the women he courted, and it seems to the Soldier that everyone had known that but had never cared to bring it up.

"Need any clarification?" Bruce asks.

The Soldier is still lost in recollection. "Men would sometimes proposition me when I was walking home from work," he says, because weapons do not need social filters and so he doesn't have any.

"Uh," says Bruce.

"Everyone in Dumbo was very poor," the Soldier continues. "You were liable to be either mugged or propositioned on the streets at night. I think it was preferable to be asked for sex rather than to be hit."

"Yeah, sounds like it would be," says Bruce, who is now flushed.

"There were many drag clubs." And homosexual bars, cafeterias, and automats. "Steve and I lived close to the Navy Yard and everyone knew who went there, I think."

"Sailors?" Bruce guesses. He looks as if he is sitting on something uncomfortable.

"Male prostitutes."

"Oh."

If the Soldier strains his memory, he can remember the going rates and the slang for the various acts. "When I was propositioned," he says, "they would offer three dollars for bl—"

SERGEANT BARNES, DR. BANNER, THE AVENGERS HAVE RETURNED, JARVIS announces, and very much relief washes over Bruce's face.

"Thanks," he mutters, standing. "C'mon Bucky, let's see how everyone's doing."

They don't have to travel far before the Soldier can hear Tony and Steve arguing.

A/N: The title of this story is a reference to the 1993 Seinfeld episode, "The Outing." In it, Jerry and George are mistaken for lovers by a reporter and repeatedly use the phrase "not that there's anything wrong with that" while dispelling the notion. The episode won a GLAAD Media Award and "not that there's anything wrong with that" has since become a catchphrase among fans.

Television did exist in Bucky and Steve's day, but it was not widespread and likely would have been prohibitively expensive for them.

The show with the aliens and the laugh track is 3rd Rock from the Sun, an American sitcom that ran from 1996 to 2001. Some autistic people (myself included), especially children, find the show cathartic because they can relate to the aliens' lack of understanding of various customs and idioms.

The word gay did not come to predominantly mean homosexual until the 1960s, but it was used to refer to homosexuality at least as far back as 1922, so it's entirely possible that Bucky and Steve had heard it used that way, especially considering the area in which they lived.

The high stress and adrenaline rush of combat can cause erections. While I imagine the odds are the Soldier was around at least a handful of gay HYDRA agents in his time, he also may have witnessed a lot of "situational sexuality," wherein people in segregated environments such as the military or prison engage in sexual behaviors they would not usually partake in.

Alfred Kinsey was an American sexologist at Indiana University. His research on human sexuality in the 40s and 50s remains well-known and influential to this day. The Stonewall Riots were demonstrations against a police raid by the gay community that occurred in June 1969, in Greenwich Village, New York City. They are considered the most influential moment leading into the gay liberation movement.

Arnie Roth was a character introduced in the Captain America comics in the 80s as Steve's childhood best friend (most of his back story was given to Bucky in the films, as comic Bucky was a young child when he met Steve instead of having grown up with him). He was a remarkable character for his time period because at that point in history, the Comics Code Authority did not allow books to talk about homosexuality. Yet Marvel introduced Arnie and his partner and used them to tell stories about discrimination and acceptance.

According to Fred Van Lente, who wrote the movie tie-in comic Captain America: Homecoming, Bucky and Steve lived in Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), Brooklyn. In the 30s and 40s, this would have been a very poor and culturally gay area of Brooklyn. The nearby Brooklyn Navy Yard in particular was famous for its prostitution, and there was at least one gay brothel near it. If you'd like to know more about the history of Steve and Bucky's neighborhood, do a search on Google for a Dreamwidth post by thingswithwings entitled "Steve Rogers' 1930s/1940s neighbourhood." It's fascinating.

I have no idea if three dollars actually was the going rate for fellatio in Brooklyn at that time; that bit is a reference to ameonna's Captain America story, Thirty-Six Dollars, on Archive of Our Own. It's a very darkly amusing story, but it deals very heavily with sexual assault, so keep that in mind if you want to look it up.