jmtorres | the story i'm only writing the good bits version of

669 words.

so this probably qualifies as the first scene of the plot-device-turns-Steve-into-a-woman story, fair warning for medium asinine Tony--

Everything hurt, and then everything shifted: Steve lost his balance and tripped over a lab table, in that order. He went down hard. Someone--Tony--was shouting at him on the comms but he couldn't answer. He couldn't breathe, his chest felt too tight like it hadn't in--in years--and he was fucking terrified. He hadn't tipped ass over tea kettle the first time he'd changed, but he'd changed into a super soldier, into a body that never seemed to get disoriented, never failed him. What if he'd changed back?

It was in desperation that he tore open his uniform jacket, because that had never been the problem, back then, asthma was constriction in the airways, not constriction of the chest. So he was really actually startled when it worked, when something popped loose and his chest felt off but he could breathe, so he did, one heaving breath after another. It wasn't exactly easy, it still didn't feel right, his undershirt was stretched and he couldn't think why and he was afraid to look down, to see what the problem was. He wasn't like before, at least, he was pretty sure of that much, but something was different.

He managed to pull himself up onto his knees just as Iron Man set down in front of him. Tony's faceplate flipped up as he said, "You okay over the--holy shit, you've got boobs."

"I'm fine," Steve said automatically, because as long as he was breathing, he was fine. Then he processed what Tony had said. He reached up and--yeah--hell.

"We're going to need medical evac for Cap, looks non-life-threatening, but I've been told I'm not allowed to judge anymore," Tony said into his earpiece. He was simultaneously typing one-handed on a mini-keyboard he'd popped out of the other gauntlet.

"What are you doing?" Steve asked, wishing he could argue about the evac, but Tony was right about that, it was too weird.

"Tweeting," Tony replied. The keyboard retracted and Steve's phone buzzed somewhere in his pocket.

"In the middle of a battle?" Steve asked, frowning.

"Battle's over, we killed the guy, Hulk put him through a wall," Tony said lightly.

"The guy who shot me with the ray that, um?" Steve asked. He dug out his phone, since apparently they weren't on alert anymore. Tony's tweet said: I just saw Cap with no bra. There was already a reply from Hulk: WHY CAP NEED BRA? and another from Clint asking, Is this the medical emergency?, though why they didn't just use comms was a mystery to Steve.

"Yeah that guy--shit, Steve, we killed the guy, fuck, I'm sure he has notes, I'll just--" Tony extruded a USB plug from his gauntlet and shoved it at the nearest terminal. The screen flickered and Steve hoped it was from Tony taking over the system and not from something about to go dead. "Hey, how's everything else?" Tony asked, over his shoulder.

"Everything--else?" Steve asked. "I'm sorry, I missed the end of the battle, I was a little out of it--"

"No, I mean, with you," Tony said. "You know, downstairs. Have you still got everything or--?"

"I don't know, Steve admitted, because everything felt weird, and he hadn't been able to identify what felt weird in his chest so he couldn't figure out what it meant that he felt weird anywhere else.

"Well, check," Tony said with an exasperated glare.

"I've got one set of parts or the other, and either way checking won't change it, so I'm not going to grope myself in front of you," Steve answered.

"What, you're not curious?" Tony asked.

It wasn't that Steve wasn't curious, it was just-- "It doesn't matter," he said. He leaned forward and dropped his head and just breathed, happy to be able to.

"The fuck does that mean, it doesn't matter?" Tony asked.

Steve just shook his head, unable to express his relief that he was still full-size, still Captain America; no matter if the shape had changed, he wasn't the skinny kid who couldn't fight, and next to that, no, nothing else mattered.