AN: I'm planning on writing a Winter Soldier fic -but I figured in order to understand Bucky now, I'd better get a handle on the guy he had been in the forties. Thus, this oneshot. :) If you're interested in the WS fic (multichaptered) alert me and you'll see when it gets published :) Enjoy!
Bucky, Before
Beds were nice. He was really enjoying this. Even if it wasn't a four-poster, but just a cot in the infirmary. He was enjoying this.
He had protested, at first –they all had, saying that if they had survived being captured by HYDRA and fought and walked their way out from behind the lines, they were probably okay, but that Colonel had insisted, and so here they all were –even Steve, who probably needed it least.
But hey, it wasn't so bad. And the nurses were pretty.
The lamps glowed in the darkness of the infirmary. Bucky didn't know what time it was precisely –late night, early morning. Everybody else was sacked out. According to the scuttlebutt Dum Dum heard, they'd all be shipped back to England at oh-eight-hundred for some well-deserved leave. Maybe even sent home.
He didn't know how he felt about that.
A pale figure slipped through the tent flap with a clipboard in hand, checking on the sleeping men. "Evening," he said with a shadow of a smile when she gets to him.
"You doing all right, Sergeant?" she asked quietly, returning the smile.
"I've been better, but I've been worse too," he said, smile getting a little more real. "How about you?"
"I'm on the night shift," she said. "Kind of speaks for itself, doesn't it?"
"You wanna lie down, catch a few winks?" Bucky offered. "I'll scoot over." He winked.
She smiled and her red hair framed her face with a warm glow in the lamplight. "As tempting as the offer is, I think you'd better save your strength."
"Hey, I walked thirty miles, I think I can manage," he said, a little put out.
"Hey, it's not just that," she assured him, "I'll catch it if the head nurse sees me."
"Will you catch it if you sit down?" he asked.
The corners of her mouth turned up. "Not if I stand up fast enough. Let me finish my rounds, though."
"Okay, it's a date," he said, pleased. She laughed quietly and continued around to the other sleeping men, monitoring their conditions.
Bucky sat up in bed and bunched the pillow up behind him, crossing his arms over the regulation pajamas they gave you in the infirmary. Tonight just got a bit better.
She finished her rounds and dragged a metal chair over to his cot and sat down, hiding a yawn. "So, Sergeant, what's your story?" she asked.
"How do you mean?" Bucky asked.
"Any other man walks that many miles, goes through that much –they sleep like a log." She eyed the other motionless bodies in the tent. "But not you. You're awake at oh-two-hundred." Her eyebrow arched.
"Who can sleep when the night nurse is so pretty?" Bucky said with a smile, but a brittle one around the edges. He didn't want to sleep –he might dream about …everything. And he wasn't even sure what 'everything' even means. "What's your name?"
"Eileen," she said. "But it's Nurse O'Neil to you." She gave him a mock stern look.
"All the time? Or just right now?" Bucky asked.
She smiled slowly. "I get off duty at oh-five-hundred."
"Okay," he said. "I'll find you and meet Eileen."
She laughed. "Okay."
"But you've got to call me Bucky," he told her.
"I think I can manage that. But why Bucky?"
"Huh?"
"Bucky," she said. "Your first name is James, it's on your paperwork."
"You've been reading my papers?" he said with a cheeky smile.
She frowned at him. "I'm a nurse, I have to know if you're allergic to things like penicillin or if you need morphine on a regular schedule."
"You learn anything else from those papers?"
"You had pneumonia, but you're making an amazing recovery." She raised her eyebrows, waiting.
"Right," he said, licking his lips and chuckling silently. "Uh, it's a nickname. My father's name is James. My middle name is Buchannan. 'Bucky' sounds a lot better than Buchannan or 'little James.'" He shrugged.
"Everybody calls you Bucky?" she said, interested.
"Uh huh," he said. "Since I was six. What about you?"
"Hmm?"
"What's your story? Where're you from?"
"Maine," she said with a smile. "Crab Apple Cove, if you can believe it."
"What? Really?" Bucky asked.
"Oh yeah," she said, nodding. "Great place to grow up. My father's a doctor –he got me interested in medicine. You?"
"Brooklyn. I don't know if you'd call that a great place to grow up, but we had some good times." He remembered very clearly being knights in shining armor, and cops and robbers, and Robin Hood and his merry men in abandoned lots and back alleys during hot summer days and after school in winter. Always him and Steve, taking down the imaginary enemies.
Nowadays they're not so imaginary, and he saw them up close and personal.
"Yeah? What'd you do?" she asked.
"Welding," he said, "like my Dad. I like working with my hands." It seemed like a lifetime ago. Before the war, before the uniform. He liked getting his hands dirty. Getting them bloody was different. He passed a hand over his eyes.
"Maybe you're human like the rest of us after all," she said.
"Hell, I don't know," he says, suddenly bone tired.
"Maybe catch a couple winks," she said, brushing the hair off of his forehead. "Don't worry, I'll wake you up at oh-five-hundred."
"It's a date," he whispered. He doesn't protest when she helps him lie back down and plumps the pillow under his head.
"It's a date. Sleep well, Bucky," she whispered.