Go on your sub Steve rant.
oh man okay, hopefully this all comes out right ‘cause I’ve had three hours of sleep and a lot of coffee and sub!Steve makes me waaaaaay emotional but all right let’s get started.
Let’s start with the physical reasons.
For the first twenty-four years of Steve Rogers’s life, he looks like this:
He’s lived his entire life held back by illness. He suffered from asthma in a time prior to inhalers (not invented until the 1950s), and with the weather like it is in Brooklyn, and the Depression being what it was, probably was left fighting for his life every single winter. I’m not saying he typically liked this aspect of his life. He hated it, of course he did. All this time he’s only ever wanted to stop being a burden and give the world what he thinks he should (which is, in all honesty, his life, but that’s a rant for another time). He looks at himself as more trouble than he’s worth, people like Bucky constantly having to come in and finish the jobs he starts because while he has the drive, he lacks the strength.
But then, the unthinkable happens. In the span of less than an hour, he is abruptly 145 pounds heavier and almost a full foot taller with absolutely no health problems. It’s all he ever wanted, truly, and he doesn’t regret pulling the crazy shit he did to get it.
But that doesn’t change the fact that it is quite frankly too much. They make vague reference to it at the very beginning of his change in The First Avenger, when he suddenly loses his balance while running after the Hydra agent and falling through the front window of a flower shop. His body is just simply too large for itself. When you grow gradually, your body has time to adjust (and puberty still makes you a gawky klutz regardless), but he didn’t make this change through puberty. It happened so suddenly that he barely got a moment to realize his vantage point was different before he was suddenly on the fighting lines. He doesn’t regret it. He wants this.
But suddenly, the world is smaller than it was the day before. Everything is a little frailer to his touch. Suddenly, he doesn’t need to take a fighting stance just to walk the streets alone. In fact, the stance he’s adopted as his own for the first two and a half decades of his life just in order to get by is suddenly intimidating. Steve is a gentle soul, all things considered, and he’s suddenly the pit bull he always tried to be as a pomeranian. Even when he doesn’t want to be.
I’m not saying people are afraid of Steve. He’s a hero. No one is scared of him. I guess what I’m saying is closer to the fact that Steve is scared of himself. Now, he can hurt people. Badly. Without really trying. And sure that’s all fine and good for when you work for Hydra or Hitler, but if he’s just ticked at you for talking in movie theatres, he really doesn’t want to cave in your skull.
He’s used to people finishing his fights for him. He’s glad he no longer has to do that, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s just so disorienting with how different it is now. While before, he constantly fought to stand his ground, now, he feels like he takes up too much room. He stands awkwardly, trying to be as accommodating as he was before to the space around him.
Which brings us to the emotional/mental reasons.
Steve is a leader. He has a strong will and exudes a level of confidence that, while he sometimes isn’t sure of, is always willing to fight for. But when faced with developing new relationships - however he intends them to evolve - he’s a little shy and kind of fumbly. You see a lot of it in the First Avenger when talking to Peggy or Natalie Dormer’s character right before she jumps him, but you see it in Winter Soldier as well, with Sharon and Sam and even, to some extent, Tasha, though as that isn’t exactly a new relationship budding, it’s obvious he’s more comfortable around her by the time we see them hanging around each other in Winter Soldier.
He wants to make friends, but the confidence he has in battle abruptly tends to leave him, and he just stands there making goofy jokes until the other person laughs and winks and goes along. He’s still not used to the fact that people suddenly find him interesting and want to talk to him, and honestly, it seems to unnerve him a bit.
Taking charge is exhausting, and Cap has to do it all the time. For someone who, by the ending point of Winter Soldier, has only spent somewhere between the last three or four years as A Leader, that has to be a lot of pressure. Especially when, as he puts it, he used to have nothing. Now, Steve was always willing to fight for the right side, even if he stood alone.
But that’s the thing, he usually did. I mean, Bucky tended to be in tow most of the time, but other than Bucky, Steve didn’t really have anyone keeping up his side. It’s much easier to take charge of yourself than an entire team of people, and suddenly, he has a whole legion of followers and it’s got to be a little daunting.
Especially since, considering, back when he just had Bucky on his side, Bucky still managed to grab the reins of the situation. Oh, Steve, look what you got yourself into, you’ve gotta stop being so reckless, buddy. But now, Steve can’t be quite so reckless. Not with all these other people’s lives. He’s always willing to go down into the trenches himself, but when it comes to other people, he doesn’t like putting them in danger. It isn’t quite so horrifying with the superhumans he works with saving New York, but on a day-to-day, he’d rather have orders to take than be giving his own (as long as he believes them to be right).
The thing is, when you’re not used to having control, when you don’t necessarily WANT the amount of control you’re given, the first thing you want to do is give it up. Now, Steve was told he’d be the first of many supersoldiers. All he wanted was to fight in the war. He didn’t necessarily want to be in charge, but he took charge because he’s Steve and it was the right thing to do. Especially after the serum was destroyed.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to hand it to someone else, when he can. Not even just sexually, but in general situations. He was willing to take charge in the mall when agents were on them, but then Natasha gave out her plan and ordered, “just do it” and he obeyed instantly, because he trusts her, and if she thinks it’s the safer route, he wants to go that way.
People are going to argue that Steve isn’t a submissive person due to the fact that he has no issues butting heads with authority figures. Those people have never met a person they know to be submissive in a daily life situation.
Submissives have to feel safe in order to submit. If you’re challenging them in a way they do not appreciate or enjoy, they will fight you on every step. If there is trust and understanding, they go easily, maybe occasionally with a snarky comment or two, because quite often there’s an attempt to push the confidence straight out of the pores of their skin so that people don’t take advantage of the giving nature or mistake it for naiveté. Even when a submissive fully trusts someone, it’s just a learned behavior. Steve does this as well. He trusts Bucky, so he lets him drag him around town with little more than a sigh and an eye roll, and he trusts Nick - until he doesn’t, and suddenly the claws are out.
Submissive doesn’t mean doormat. I feel like a lot of people who don’t identify as either side of the dom/sub coin tend to forget that.
Anyway, that’s my spiel. To be fair, a lot of this is probably projection. But to me, Steve Rogers just doesn’t seem like a dom.
Sorry this is a lot of blathering.
