Bucky never liked girls. He didn't get what all the rage was about, why all the older boys went to the pictures and the dances with a bunch of long-necked broads who thought they were better than everybody else. It was stupid! They wore bright red lipstick that got on everything and big fluffy curls that were just begging to have mud thrown at it. He'd gotten in trouble more than once for doing just that. If he'd known the girl was crazy enough to spend that long on her hair, he would have just pushed her down the stairs or something, spare her the misery of living.

And the girls his age were even worse! They played with their dumb dolls and turned their noses up at him when he got in a fight. They didn't know what they were missing, those stupid girls and their stupid fake babies. He couldn't even hit one of them when they were mean to him! Which wasn't fair, not even a little bit. That's why he was in trouble now. Bucky hadn't even meant to hurt her that bad or nothing. Some stupid girl was getting all in his face and calling him dirty and when he said well, what's so wrong with being dirty?, she'd turned her nose up at him like a little pig. So, he'd pushed her. What else was he supposed to do? He told old man George at the home that pushing someone who was mean to you was only fair, but the old man had taken him by his ear and thrown him out, screaming that it's not fair to push girls. Thanks to that stupid girl and her stupid nose, he probably wasn't going to get dinner tonight.

Scowling, he kicked a glass Coke bottle that was lying on the ground. Sometimes he wished that all the girls just went away. In fact, he wished everyone just went away! And he could have all the pie and soda he wanted without some old coot harassing him.

"I said scram!"

"Not gonna happen, buster."

There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, then all hell broke loose. Smiling, Bucky skidded to a stop in front of the alley. He loved a good fight. He stuck his head into the alley and frowned. It wasn't a very good fight.

The largest guy was a few years older than Bucky, and a lot bigger than him. He was probably sixteen years old! He had a shock of bright orange hair and freckles smushed so close together that from far away, it looked like he had a giant birthmark stretched across his nose. That's Pat Henry, Bucky realized slowly. He lived at the same boy's house Bucky did, and he was one hell of a bully. He carried all his weight around in his gut, but he could still carry a mean punch.

The other kid was a twig, probably didn't even weigh eighty pounds. He didn't stand a chance against Pat Henry. Bucky was about to walk away when he realized that the smaller one was wearing a dress. It was a girl. Pat landed a hit right on her face, knocking her back against the wall. She leapt back at him and swung a tiny white fist at his gut. It missed so spectacularly that Bucky wasn't sure if she was messing around.

Then, he realized, growing angry, that this wasn't fair. If he couldn't push some stupid girl, why could this jerk?

"Hey!"

Both Pat and the girl looked towards him, and he stepped farther into the mouth of the alleyway.

"You're not supposed to hit girls!"

"I'll hit whoever I want to hit." Pat stepped closer, and Bucky was cast in his shadow. "You gonna do something about it?"

"Sure am."

Bucky got the absolute crap beat out of him. He'd tried to fight back, of course, but how was a ten year old supposed to go up to someone like Pat Henry? By the end of it, he was in the corner of the alley, clutching his hands to his ribs and trying not to cry. Pat stood over him, foot raised to kick him in the face, and he was sure that this was the untimely end.

A metallic clang rang through the air. Pat's face went strangely blank before he slunk down to the alley floor with a thunk. The girl stood behind him, a wild look on her pasty face and a metal pipe in her hand.

"Are you okay?" She asked, dropping her impromptu weapon. It clattered next to Pat's big fat head.

"I'm fine." Bucky snapped, getting to his feet. The sharpness in his ribs was the most painful thing he had ever felt, but he wasn't gonna cry in front of some stupid girl.

"Thanks." She was looking at him with big blue girl eyes like he needed help.

"I don't need your thanks. What are you, six?"

"I'm nine." She snapped, balling her hands into fists. "What are you, stupid?"

"You're the stupid one! You killed Pat Henry!"

"No I didn't!" The girl growled, but then paled a little and looked down at Pat. Bucky almost felt bad. Almost. "He's dead?"

She poked Pat's cheek with her toe, and he realized that she was wearing boy shoes.

"I don't know. How do you check if someone's dead?"

"I think their heart stops beating. Right?"

Bucky held his hands up.

"Don't look at me. I didn't kill the guy with a pipe."

"I was saving you!"

"I don't need saving from a stupid girl."

That was the worst thing he could have said. She snarled at him, just like the boys at the playground did whenever Bucky won a fight, and stormed off. The girl didn't even turn her nose up at him. Bucky suddenly felt very, very bad.

"Wait! Hey, I'm sorry." She stopped, but didn't turn back to him. "Look, if it makes you feel better, I'll help you run away from the cops. They're gonna come looking for his murderer real soon."

"Really?" She spun around and smiled up at him all big and warm like those women in the old war posters.

"Yah." He scratched the back of his neck. "I'm Bucky."

"Steph."

She held her hand out all official like, and that was the last time Bucky was ever alone.

(She hadn't killed Patrick Henry, of course. He was up and hunting for vengeance a few minutes later. They hadn't known that at the time, though, and the two of them had hid in some dingy abandoned restaurant for two days. Mrs. Rogers had nearly killed the both of them when she found them huddled under some ratty blanket and eating crackers. Bucky had tried to explain that they'd murdered someone and cops and danger, but she'd just given Bucky this awful stink eye and dragged Steph out by her ear. He was scared of Mrs. Rogers for a while, but when he got the courage to come over to Steph's house, she'd made him and Steph a nice chicken broth before winking at him and saying, Now, Bucky, don't go dragging my daughter into anymore of your murder business. He liked Mrs. Rogers mighty fine after that).

"You know what some of the boys at the home do?"

"What?"

"They carve their names in a tree. It's like a pinky promise but permanent."

"Pinky promises are permanent, stupid."

"No, this is more permanent. Like an allegiance or something."

He can tell from the look on her face that she thinks the idea is absolutely grand.

A week later, Bucky knicks a knife from one of the older boys and brings Steph to a tree by the boy's home. It's the only one that isn't already marked up, and he can see why immediately—it's tiny. Originally, Steph had wanted to put "Stephanie Grace Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes". She said that it'd make their friendship official like a treaty. When they got there, it was clear that there wasn't nearly enough room. Instead, she'd painstakingly carved "StephandBucky" into the trunk. The letters were so squished together that it almost seemed to be one giant scribble. He'd complained for a while about her name being first, and she'd hit him on the ear, and then they both grinned at the carving like the pair of idiots they were.

Bucky didn't like bullies, but Steph hated them. He'd thought that maybe that first fight had just been some sort of fluke, but after hanging around Steph for a month, he realized it wasn't just some one time thing: it happened all the time.

He was walking to her house (He'd been having dinner at the Roger's household more often than the boy's home) when he heard her.

"Let go of me, you coward!"

Bucky skidded around the corner to find some guy yanking at her hair. He didn't think—he just acted. Clenching his fist tightly, Bucky swung his arm back and punched the guy in the back of the head. It didn't knock the kid out by any means, but he let go of Steph and turned towards him, shocked. Bucky was surprised to realize he was bigger than this kid—the bully probably wasn't even nine! With a smirk, Bucky inflated his chest and looked down at him.

"I think it's time for you to scram."

The kid bolted. Bucky grinned, big and toothy.

He turned to look at Steph, but she was on the ground. For two seconds, he was super worried. They'd just started being friends. She couldn't die already!

But she wasn't dying. Instead, she was kneeling over some smelly little furball of a cat.

"He was messing around with it. Yanking it's tail and junk."

"So you hit him?" Bucky crouched down next to her, and the cat meowed at him.

"What else was I supposed to do?"

For a nine year old, she was so stupid. He didn't tell her that, though. She'd probably hit him next.

"What are we gonna do with it?"

Apparently, they were gonna take it home. Steph's Ma wouldn't have liked the stray even one little bit, so the two of them made a make shift shelter on the side of her house and left some old tuna out for it. Bucky had suggested they call it Sergeant. Steph had beamed.

One cat became a lot of cats very, very quickly. Soon there was Sergeant and Colonel and Butterball and Blackbeard and a hundred other names Bucky could never remember but Steph had memorized. If Mrs. Rogers ever got suspicious about why there were a ton of strays hanging around her house, she didn't say anything. Mrs. Rogers just kept on giving them a little too much tuna in their sandwiches, Steph kept on collecting her strays, and Bucky realized that at some point in the game, he'd become one of them.

Steph is smarter than him by a long shot. He gets a decent amount of lessons at the boy's home, but it still shocks him sometimes how smart Steph is. He walks her to the library once a week; it's on the other side of town, and Mrs. Rogers isn't too keen on Steph going that far away alone. He never checks anything out, but he'll look through some picture stories or old war books as she reads and reads and reads. He used to ask about what she was reading, but he knew better than that now. After she learned something, she never shut up about it.

"Did you know that they found a bust of Nefertiti in 1912? We should go see it when we're older. She was a girl pharaoh. A girl pharaoh!"

"They found another planet called Pluto a few years ago. We should fly there when we're older. It's supposed to be real tiny."

"Did you know that we hosted the Olympics in 1904? Or, New Orleans did. We should go to the Olympics when we're older. I bet they'll have it in New York next."

Bucky groaned and put his arm over his eyes.

"Yah Steph, I know. You told me yesterday."

Steph just grins at him.

He's always all huffy when she tells him all that stupid stuff, but he doesn't mind it that much. Not even a little bit, really. And Steph knows him well enough that she keeps telling him all of her stupid little facts, even when he keeps on complaining like a real jerk. It's just how they work.

His prized possession is a comic book that he had spent weeks saving up all his pennies for. It was one of those that had all the old newspaper funnies lined up, and even though he'd read it a thousand times, it was still funny every time he cracked it open again. He'd never been able to afford another one. He showed it to Steph for the first time on her tenth birthday. She'd absolutely loved it.

"Do you have anymore?"

"Nah. They're a lot of money. But this one is pretty good."

Then, taking a deep breath, he shoved it in her hands.

"Happy birthday, Steph."

"Don't be stupid. You can't give this to me."

"Don't be a jerk!"

"Don't be a punk, then!"

And then she'd planted a wet kiss right on his cheek and his face got so hot he thought he was going to die.

Two weeks later, on his eleventh birthday, she'd handed him a comic book of her own. They were done all in crayon, and on the top she'd scrawled Stephanie Grace Rogers.

"I peeked in all the newspapers and junk. I think I got most of the stories right."

That had been the first time he realized that Steph was the best person in the whole world, and he would follow her around forever.

Every birthday after that, Steph would make him these great little comic books, and each year they got better and better until Bucky was sure she was gonna be a famous artist. It wasn't until he was thirteen that he realized she might not get a chance to be much of anything.

Bucky opened Steph's front door and stepped inside. Mrs. Rogers came out of the kitchen, looking as though she hadn't slept in days. She gave him a small smile.

"You might want to go back home, dear. Stephanie's a bit under the weather."

Bucky frowned.

"I got her home when she had that asthma attack last summer. I think I can handle her now."

Suddenly, Mrs. Rogers looked very, very weary, and Bucky wondered if he had said the wrong thing. He was about to apologize when she spoke.

"Of course, dear. Go right on in. Maybe the company would do her good."

Shooting her an uneasy smile, Bucky sauntered into Steph's bedroom and pulled to a stop. She was sleeping, her scratchy old covers drawn all the way up to her chin. In fact, every single blanket she had was wrapped around her in some bizarre 'd always been pale, but now she was absolutely white. The bed shook slightly, and Bucky realized that it was because of the force of her shivering. Steph wasn't just under the weather—Steph was dying.

Bucky stumbled out of her bedroom and out of her house, not bothering to say goodbye to Mrs. Rogers. With a grim face, Bucky marched right out to the docks and got his first job.

He didn't make it back to the Rogers' household until a week later. When he'd walked in, Mrs. Rogers had seemed surprised. He realized dumbly that she probably thought he had wimped out on them. He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out his meager paycheck, thrusting it towards her.

"It's not much. It's all they'll pay me at the docks, but Steph needs more firewood or medicine or something."

Mrs. Rogers had promptly burst into tears. Steph was the only girl he'd ever really hung around, and she'd never cried once, so he was at a loss for what to do. He reached forward and patted her lightly on the shoulder. She wiped her eyes and looked straight into his eyes in a way that made him want to run out of the house.

"You're a good kid, Bucky. Steph is lucky to have you. I'll be right back, now you go get in there and keep her company, you hear?"

He nodded and stumbled away from the weepy Mrs. Rogers. Bucky opened the door to Steph's room, and his face split into a grin when he realized that she was awake.

"Bucky! Where've you been?" Her voice was hoarse, and she burst into a fit of phlegmy coughs right after she spoke. He waited until they subsided before he said anything.

"Thought I could use a break from your skinny little ass for a while. Let me tell you, it was nice not dragging you out of a fight every day."

She didn't find out about the job until the end of the winter. She'd clubbed him soundly in the ear for it, but that was just her way of showing affection. She was a scrapper when she really cared about something.

He didn't find out until the end of the next summer just how tight money had been at the Rogers household. He didn't want to think what might have happened had he not showed up that day, dirty from the ducks and clutching his only paycheck in his hand.

Bucky ends up keeping the job at the docks, even when winter passes and Steph is back to her normal self, running around and beating on bullies in Brooklyn alleys. He's thirteen, practically a man, and he needs to supply for their future.

(Strangely, he never really thinks about how his future became their future).

Bucky is fifteen and Steph is fourteen when he notices the way her eyes always latch onto the truly intricate hairstyles in a crowd. Steph may be his only real friend, but sometimes Bucky forgets that he's her only friend.

One night, they're sitting in her living room. It was storming awful bad that night, and Mrs. Rogers had told him that there was no way he'd be walking back to the boy's home in that weather. It wasn't too abnormal. He stayed in their living room frequently enough that he had a nightshirt stuffed in one of their cabinets, and there were usually blankets on the couch for Steph. He'd argued with her that first night, that she needed to be in a warm bed, but Steph could be stubborn when she wanted to be. So he'd slept on the floor with borrowed pillows and she'd slept about a foot above him on her lumpy couch. He'd never tell a living soul about the stupid grin he'd been wearing when he fell asleep that night.

They'd just had dinner and Steph was sitting on the floor, her back on the couch. He peeked over her shoulder as he sat behind her: she was drawing a picture of Mrs. Rogers laughing. It was really good. Bucky smiled, and quickly, so he wouldn't lose courage, dug his hands in her hair.

She jumped, her pencil scratching a mark along the drawing. Bucky ignored it and began to move his fingers through her hair.

"I'm gonna try this, and when it doesn't work, you're not going to say anything and we're gonna pretend this never happened."

He can't see her face, but he knows her well enough to know that she's grinning like a fool. He's smiling a little too, but she doesn't need to know that.

He was right; in the end, the entire thing was a disaster. The plait is sloppy and almost comes undone when Steph turns her head, but she's smiling so brightly that his chest practically glows and he has to go to bed pretty quickly after that, because there are enough problems in their lives without adding god damn feelings into the whole mess.

They're sitting in that little alley by her house. The cats come and go and die, but Sergeant is still walking around. He's lost an ear and gained a lot of weight, but he's still Sergeant. He meows at nothing and settles on Steph's thighs. Bucky closes his eyes and leans his head back against the side of the house. The night is warm and he doesn't have work and Steph's with him and Bucky, well, Bucky just feels really nice.

"I think I like girls."

He jerks a little (he doesn't mean to, really), and one of the alleycats scatters.

"Could you say that again?"

"I think I like girls." Steph's voice is soft, and she won't look at him. She pets Sergeant almost forcefully.

"Huh." Bucky scratches the back of his head. "You don't like boys?"

"I never said that." Her face and neck are about as red as a cherry pie.

"Huh." It was weird, Bucky supposed, but Steph had always been a little weird. "Well, okay."

Steph's head snaps up.

"You're okay with that?"

"'Course I am. You could like goats for all I care. Besides, it'd be hard not to like broads. They're pretty great. I would know." He makes sure his grin is as obnoxious, hopefully large enough to cover whatever doubts she's got.

"You're a punk."

"You're just mad I've danced with more girls than you."

She knocks her shoulder into his, he loops an arm around her, and Sergeant meows in protest before settling himself into both of their laps.

She's gone and gotten herself in another fight again, normal, but this one ends differently. She's still way in over her head, and the other guy still doesn't really seem to know what to do with the stick of a girl that's attacking him, and Bucky still pulls her out by the collar of her dress. At some point in this mess that his life's become, a pocketwatch falls out of Steph's pocket.

He notices Steph stiffen up, but he doesn't notice the watch on the ground until the other guy slams his heel on top of it, leering at the two of them like he'd won. It's then that Bucky realizes that it was her Pa's.

He lets go of Steph and socks the guy in the jaw, hard enough to knock him back. He staggers away from them, but Bucky hits him again, and again, and again, until Steph puts a hand on his shoulder.

"We gotta go, Bucky. Let's just go."

His knuckle is bleeding and he's breathing heavy and the guy on the ground isn't moving.

"Okay. Yah. Let's go, Steph."

He walks her back to her place and sits in her living room with her. She cradles the busted pocketwatch in her hand. He remembers, once, that she'd told him it was the only thing she had that had been her Pa's. Bucky doesn't really think that it's a good time to bring that up, though.

"Steph?"

"Hm?"

"You okay?"

She doesn't answer right away, taking his question seriously.

"Yah. Yah, I'm all right. He's been gone for a long time." Bucky doesn't know how to respond to that, so he just puts an arm around her shoulders and lets her think for a bit. It takes her a long time to talk again.

"Just- you can't leave me, okay?"

He doesn't know where she got that idea from, and if she'd been in a better mood, he might have been a bit offended. Of course he's not gonna leave. It's never been just him, it's always been them, the StephandBucky. He wants to tell her that, but it'd come out weird and emotional, and today's been emotional enough as is. Instead, he just scruffs her hair.

"I'm with you till the end of the line."

A month later, her Ma dies, and she doesn't smile for a long time, not until the next time he tells her, standing outside the apartment she had to move into because she couldn't afford to live in the house on her own,

"I'm with you til the end of the line."

The smile is small and sad, but it's enough. It's always been enough.

He moves in the very next day—his birthday was in a month, anyway, and the boy's home would have kicked him out the very day he turned eighteen. Steph protests, of course ("you're never gonna find a wife if you're living with some other girl!"), but they were a team. Always were.

The cats end up following them too, and Bucky makes sure to really complain about it when he catches her sticking a bowl of food out onto the fire escape. He's not even sure how the cats get up that high.

Bucky still has his job on the docks and Steph ends up becoming the librarian at the library they used to walk to when they were kids. Somehow, they scrounge up just enough money to put Steph through art school. They don't eat the heartiest meals, but they're happy.

"You should marry me." Bucky says as his greeting, shutting the front door behind him. Steph is drawing, but it surprises her enough that she kind of jumps, and her pencil drops to the floor.

"Could you say that again?"

"We should get married. You should marry me." His words kind of slur together, and he stabilizes himself on the kitchen table.

"Uh-huh. That's what I thought. How much did you have to drink, Bucky?"

"Only a bit." She glares at him until he speaks again. "Okay, a lot. But that's not the point. It's a good idea."

Steph kind of closes off then, and he wonders if he should just shut up. He walks over to her and half sits, half lays on the couch next to her. He ticks off his reasons on his fingers.

"No, hear me out, Steph. I don't think we've been apart for more than, what, a day? In ten years. If one of us got married to someone else, the other would just have to come with, and I don't think your husband would be too happy about that. And we live together. I haven't met a broad I like half as much as I like you. We both like girls, and I don't like boys, but that's okay, since you're a girl. I can bake a pretty mean cake, too. I'll bake you one, if you marry me. It'll be like a trade." He can't quite see straight and his head falls into her lap, but he's too drunk to care. She begins to stroke his hair lightly and lets him ramble. "We've already got the cats, since they followed us here and you won't stop feeding them. They're like our children. And we don't want them to be bastards, right? And I'll protect you, too. Not that you need protecting, but I'd help you beat up bullies until we're old and dead. Other guys would stop you. I won't. I swear. I'd let you do it until you were all old and wrinkly. Have any of the other guys said they'd let you do that?"

"Well, no. Mostly because you're the only guy who's ever proposed to me." She says it lightly, like it's a joke. One of her fingers brushes against his ear, and he smiles.

"You gotta admit it's not a bad idea."

"I'm not marrying you because you feel obligated to protect me, Bucky."

He jerks up then and gets right in her face. He's way too close, but she doesn't back up. One of her blonde eyebrows is quirked up curiously and her cheeks are red. He can smell her breath, which means she can smell his. He hopes it doesn't smell too much like a liquor store.

"That's not why I wanna marry you." His voice is low and adamant. "It's not."

In the back of his drunk mind, he thinks he wants to kiss her, just a little bit. Before he can accept or reject that thought, Steph backs away and pushes him lightly on the couch. She grabs a blanket and drapes it over him.

"Tell you what, Bucky. If we're both still single when I'm 25—" He whines a little, "—okay, 21, when I'm 21, I'll marry you."

Bucky considers that for a moment. She's nineteen now—he can wait two years.

"Pinky promise?" He lifts a hand out of the blanket.

"Pinky promise." She grins and loops their pinkies together. He falls asleep a few minutes later.

Steph jokes about it sometimes ("It was the most romantic proposal in the whole wide world. Pinky promises and everything."), and when Bucky's really smashed, he calls her his fiancee and tries to dance with her in their tiny living room. Eventually, though, they stop bringing it up. Bucky dances with other girls most nights, and Steph dates other guys some nights, and then it's a month before her 21st birthday and he remembers.

Bucky was supposed to go to lunch with some broad (he feels bad about ditching her later), but instead he finds a park bench and sits there for a long time. A really long time. Long enough that some old lady asks him if he's all right.

But he's got a lot to think about. He wasn't lying when he'd said that he liked Steph a lot. He'd thought about marrying her a few times before his awkwardly drunken proposal. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd always just assumed they'd be together forever. If that meant marriage, that meant marriage.

That wasn't a good reason to marry a girl, but he had other reasons too! He'd hardly even admitted it to himself, but he'd always found her… attractive. Sometimes, he'd have one of those dreams, but instead of whatever chipper girl he'd been dancing with that week, it'd be Steph, with her big blue eyes and flat chest, and he was sure that she'd be a moaner—

Anyway, marrying Steph wouldn't be the worst. Not even close to the worst. And he was pretty sure he could convince her. He knew she liked girls, but she said she'd liked boys too. To be honest, Bucky wasn't entirely sure how that worked out, but he didn't really care all that much. Steph was Steph.

After sitting on that park bench for nearly two hours, Bucky was resolved. He even went over to a tiny jewelry store and bought the most expensive ring he could afford. That ended up being the second cheapest ring, but it was still pretty. The band was thin, yellow, and very, very bright. He thought she'd like it.

He'd been planning on waiting until her birthday to propose. It'd be easier to convince her if he played it off as part of their pinky promise, and then reveal whatever weird romantic feelings he had after it was too late for her back out. It was a little underhanded of him, sure, but he'd never had any illusions about who was the righteous one in their little StephandBucky.

He was going to wait, he really was, but he walked into their tiny flat that night and Steph was in her pretty blue dress and charcoal was all up her arm from drawing and she grinned at him with her baby white teeth and Bucky felt his heart drop into his stomach. He'd always known it subconsciously, but it wasn't until then, with the ring hot in his jacket pocket, that Bucky realized he was so stupidly in love with Stephanie Rogers. He didn't think he could wait another minute, let alone a month.

"Steph, let's go out to dinner tomorrow. To that little Italian place you like."

"What's the occasion?"

"You'll just have to find out tomorrow, won't you?" His grin his cocky, as per usual, and Steph chucks a pencil at his head. He ducks it and laughs.

They never do go out to dinner. They wake up next morning to find out Pearl Harbor's been bombed, and a week later, Bucky gets his draft letter in the mail.

She's angrier than he'd ever seen her. She's beyond angry.

"I'm just as good as all those other girls!" Steph fumes as she dumps old tuna fish into a chipped grey bowl. Her face is red when she opens the door and drops it on the ground. Bucky here's a cat meow before she slams the door closed.

"You're better than those dames, Steph."

"Then why won't they let me in the nursing program?"

It's a rhetorical question, since they both know why. Steph gets sick about once a month, let alone her asthma and allergies and general frailness.

Bucky had walked in about twenty minutes ago to find her furiously washing clean dishes. Steph had a thing about cleanliness when she was real angry. He's in his army dress, sitting on the couch and watching Steph furiously fluff pillows.

"I'm guessing you don't want to go to the Stark Expo, then?"

Steph drops the pillow in her hand, suddenly out of steam.

"No, of course I do. Oh, shoot Bucky. I'm sorry. I'm ruining your last night, aren't I?"

"I'd knock some sense into you if you were any closer. You couldn't ruin my last night if you tried."

"Is that a challenge?" She grins, one side of her lips quirking up higher than the other. He grins back before he realizes what she's about to do. Quickly, Steph picks up the pillow and chucks it at his head. He doesn't even have time to duck.

"You're a little punk." He says slowly, before grabbing another pillow and whipping it at her.

They end up missing the Stark Expo all together, consumed as they are in the pillow fight. He wins (obviously) by wrenching her final pillow out of her hands and pinning her wrists above her head. Her cheeks are bright red with laughter and exhilaration.

"What's so funny, punk? I beat you."

Steph can't respond (a mix of laughter and asthma), so he just lies down next to her as she catches her breath. After a silent moment, she sets her head on his shoulder.

"God, we haven't done that since we were kids."

He hums in agreement and sets his hand in her hair.

"You know, you're gonna miss my 21st birthday. And I'm gonna miss your 22nd."

"I'll right you a letter. Promise."

"Every day, you hear me Bucky?"

"Yes ma'am."

Steph turns her face deeper into his shoulder and falls silent, and for a few minutes, Bucky pretends. He can hear one of the cats meowing outside, the sound of some kid talking, and Steph's breathing, muffled in the shoulder of his uniform.

"Do you ever think about that one time you proposed to me?"

He considers telling her, just pulling the ring out of his pocket and fessing up. It was too late to get married before he left, but they could be engaged. It'd be like a pinky promise but permanent.

Instead, he just pats her head and says,

"Yah, I was drunk off my ass. I don't know why you put up with me, Steph."

She laughs, and they both ignore his half-assed deflection.

Bucky doesn't wake her in the morning. He's sure that she's going to smack him silly for it the next time he sees her (if there is a next time), but frankly, he was worried she might cry. He'd gone over ten years without seeing her cry, and he wasn't sure if he was equipped to deal with it if she had started. Or worse, he might spill his guts and propose to her then, only to leave a few minutes later. No, she deserved better than that.

Before he leaves, he sneaks into her bedroom and watches her sleep for a minute. He feels like a total creep, but it's the last time he's going to see her for a few months at the least—he figures she'd let it slide.

He wonders if she'll get married while he's gone. She'd been on a couple of dates over the past few years. She hadn't liked any of the guys, not really, but who's to say the next guy wasn't the one? If Bucky lived through the war, maybe he'd come back and eat dinner with them on Sunday's. He's pretty sure she'd name one of her kids after him. In fact, she'd probably be a real hard ass and name the kid Buchanan instead of James. Bucky smiles and closes the door behind him.

In the end, he decides not to take the ring with him. It was never for him anyway. He stuffs it in his bottom dresser drawer. It glitters dully on top of the old hand-drawn comic books before he shuts the drawer and leaves.

Steph-

Not really sure what to write, but if I don't, I know you'll march up here and yell at me in front of my new war buddies. Can't have that.

You'd like some of these guys. They're real swell. A little trigger happy, but swell.

How's Sergeant, and all those other lazy bums? If I come back and they're living in the flat, I'll kill you.

Bucky

Steph-

It's your birthday today, but the guys at mail say this probably won't get to you for another month. Happy Late Birthday.

To answer your question, no, there aren't many women out here, not even nurses, honestly. So even if you got in the nursing corps, I don't think you'd be near the 107th. Sorry kid.

You better not have spent your birthday moping around. There's plenty to do at home. I'll even bake you a cake when I get back for missing your birthday. You got that to look forward to, right?

Bucky

Steph-

There's a backlog here. I haven't gotten one from you in weeks. I'm starting to think you finally got into the nursing corps. If you did, you better be assigned here. If not, you better right back, punk. Thinking of you, I guess.

Bucky

Steph-

I'm not sure if you're getting my letters. Hope all is well. If you're out there picking fights with half of Brooklyn, I'm gonna kill you. In case you were still wondering, there are more nurses cropping up now. Haven't seen you among them, and I know if you got in the Corps, there's no way you'd let them assign you anywhere else but here. There are other women coming too, in a few months. A show with dancers? I don't know, but it sounds like something you'd hate. Write back soon.

Bucky

Steph-

I'm sure you're not getting my letters now, but just in case, I'm sending this out. You're freaking me out, Steph. Write back.

Miss you,

Bucky.

That's the last letter he sends to Steph, because the next day, he and the rest of the 107th are either killed or captured. He puts up a fight, a damned good one, too, but something hits him on the back of the skull and Bucky is pretty sure he's died.

He didn't, though, and he wakes up with a throbbing headache, locked in a cage with a group of other soldiers. Not all of them are from the 107th. In fact, not all of them are from the States. Bucky befriends some French guy he affectionately labels "Frenchie". He and one of the other guys, Dugan, share a bit of gallows humor to pass the time. For being captured, it's not all that bad.

That is, until a Nazi soldier comes in and takes a prisoner from his own squadron. It doesn't take long for the screaming to start, and it takes even less time for the screaming to stop. Bucky never does see him again, and there isn't much humor tossed around after that.

The next morning, the German comes back and looks over the remaining prisoners. He stops at some twig of a guy in the cage next to Bucky.

Bucky wonders what Steph would do. He had not doubt that if she were a guy, she'd be here, right next to him, saying something stupid to the German prisonkeeper that would probably get her killed. Bucky watches the German eye up the skinny little guy, and Bucky figures that he'll have to do something stupid in Steph's honor.

"Do they make the girls ugly in Germany, or is it just you guys?"

The Nazi grins at him, white and sharp, and picks the skinny guy anyway. Bucky and the rest of the soldiers in the cage pretend they don't hear the screams. It takes another day for the soldier to come back, and he goes straight for Bucky.

"This was the one so eager to volunteer." He says in broken English. Bucky gives him his cheekiest grin before they club him over the head and knock him out.

James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th…. 325725…

"Put in another injection. Maybe this one will get him to shut up."

James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th…. 325—

Bucky screams.

Bucky is pretty sure he's dead. Part of his reasoning is that the other two soldiers hadn't lasted this long, and he has been in here for what feels like a forever. The other part is that he's pretty sure he's in heaven.

He's standing in the kitchen of the Brooklyn flat he shared with Steph. The pain is still there, sure, but it feels like it's hidden under his skin. It's easy to ignore. Steph is drawing a sketch of Sergeant on their kitchen table. Bucky figures that since he's dead, there aren't really many consequences. He strides over to her and kisses her full on the lips. She smiles.

Bucky wakes up from his dream and the pain starts again.

Bucky wishes for a lot of things.

He wishes that the pain would stop.

He wishes that the 107th had never been captured.

He wishes he'd kept his damned mouth shut in that holding cell.

He wishes that Hitler had died as a kid and this whole war had never started.

Most of all, though, Bucky wishes he had fucking woken Steph up before he left.

They are speaking German above him, probably about him, and again, Bucky thinks about what a dude Steph would do in this situation. Bucky tries to say something snarky, but he just kind of drools. One of the Germans wipes it off.

James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th…. 325725…

And the pain starts again.

He is dreaming. Bucky figures that if he were dead, he wouldn't be in pain, and there definitely wouldn't be the sound of explosions in the background. Something jerks into him.

"Bucky!"

He cracks his eyes open, and Steph is standing above him. His favorite dreams are the one's where she's in them. He grins, almost drunkenly, before he grabs her head and kisses her. His body still isn't completely under his control and he misses, kissing her more on the corner of the mouth than anything else. For some reason, that's what makes him realize that this isn't a dream. He jerks away, his eyes wide.

"Steph?" His voice cracks weirdly. "Am I dead?"

"Not yet. Come on, we've got to go." Steph shoulders him up then, and he realizes that she's taller than him.

"Steph."

"Huh?"

"They've got one of us on some very weird drugs." It comes out slurred, but she still turns to look at him.

"Well, the Nursing Corps wouldn't take me, so I decided to join the army." She's grinning, but suddenly he can see the muscles lining her arms and the blood on her chin and—is that a shield?

"Huh. Always knew you were too good for those girls."

Steph snorts and hands him a gun. Bucky decides he'll deal with how weird this all is later. An explosion rocks the base.

"Come on, we've got to go now."

And she's off, and he follows because... well, he'd follow her anywhere.

He doesn't find out the whole story until later, when they're walking past enemy lines and back into friendly territory:

About two weeks after Bucky left, Steph tried her luck with the Nursing Corps. Once again, she was rejected, but not before Dr. Erskine, from the SSR, found her. He recruited her as his head nurse for something called the Super Soldier Project. On day of the experiment, she had been down handling the serum. Steph skirted around the details then, but the gist of it was that an assassin opened fire, killing Dr. Erskine and the supposed super soldier, and somehow, the serum had gotten into her system. She hadn't looked at him when she'd said that, so he decided not to ask. Anyway, she'd passed out right there, and when she woke up, she was a foot taller and a hell of a lot stronger.

After she gives him the rundown, she hits him upside the head. It hurts.

"That's for not waking me up, you jerk."

He's tired and sore and just walked out of Occupied territory, but he grins at her. She hits him again.

"So what's with the getup?"

Steph doesn't jump. Her hearing is just another thing that improved. He wonders if he'll ever be able to make her jump again.

"It was for a show. Captain America, and all that. When I found out about you guys, I didn't really have time to find a better suit."

"It suits you." He leans against her cot, and she keeps cleaning her boots. "How've you been, Steph? Really truly."

She takes a minute to think about it before she looks up at him, staring him straight in the eye.

"I'm good now that you're here." Red spreads over her ears. "I've missed you, Buck."

"I've missed you too." He sits down next to her. They're the same height when they're sitting, and it's weird. Not bad, necessarily—just weird. He knocks his shoulder into hers. "You're stuck with me now. I don't think I'm gonna leave again."

Steph grins, blushing, and goes back to cleaning her boots. He thinks about bringing up the kiss, but decides against it. Better to just ignore it completely.

The Howling Commandos. That's their name. Bucky thinks it's a little too much like something out of a Superman comic book, but he doesn't say anything. He's pretty sure it reminds Steph of when they were kids and she had those crazy plans about traveling the world and going to Pluto. The Howling Commandos are the next best thing, really. The name is still stupid.

"The Howling Commandos. I love that name!" He slurs, and Dugan slaps him on the back.

He's drunk as all hell—the Howling Commandos are back from their latest mission, and it was a success. More than a success, really. It was almost unfair how soundly they'd whooped the other guys asses. He and Dugan are knocking back another drink when Steph walks in. She's wearing a beige skirt and a blue blouse, and her hair is down. He'd almost forgotten what it looked like. Most of the time she'd had it tucked under her helmet.

"Steph!" Bucky perks up out of his seat, and his glass clatters to the ground. Steph rolls her eyes. "Dance with me!"

Before she can protest, he grabs her hand and drunkenly twirls her around the bar tables. There's no music, no dance floor, but she's laughing and that's enough for him.

"You're the best Captain to ever Captain, Captain America. You scare me a little, even. And I knew you before all this."

She twirls him this time, and someone at the bar laughs. He thinks about going over there and punching him, but decides against it.

"You weren't so bad yourself, Buck."

He winks at her, and she grins. A bit of her hair is stuck to her lip, and he tries to paw it off. He's a little too drunk, though, and end up just holding a piece of her hair. Bucky looks at it thoughtfully.

"Hey, anybody got a ribbon on them?"

A few minutes later, Bucky is sitting on the bar with Steph between his legs. The tip of his tongue sticks out as he concentrates on plaiting her hair. He can hear Frenchie and Dugan snickering in the corner, but he ignores it. Steph is smiling, and that's enough for him.

"I guess you don't need me saving you from alley fights anymore, huh?" Bucky says as he twists a bit of her hair in the ribbon. He's determined to get it better than the time he did it when he was fifteen.

"You never saved me, James Barnes." Steph puts her hand on his knee. "But you can still stick around for the fight, if you want. You can be my sidekick."

"Bucky Barnes is no sidekick." He snorts indignantly as he finishes the plait. He scoots off the bar to observe his handiwork. Somehow, it is even worse than before. People are laughing at him, he knows, but he just grins and stumbles a little. Steph grips his elbow.

"Time for bed, soldier."

Steadily, she leads him out of the bar. He shoots a salute at Dugan before she drags him out of the bar.

Out of the bar and in the cool night air, Bucky sobers a bit. He's still drunk off his ass, but he's not stumbling anymore. Steph keeps her hand on his arm, and Bucky doesn't try to shake it off. Neither of them says anything until they're outside his tent.

"Hey, I meant to give this to you a while ago. I just hadn't expected to see you again so soon, so I had to finish it." She shoves something in his hands.

It's a Superman comic, but better drawn and in charcoal. On the top is scrawled Stephanie Grace Rogers.

"Huh." He says slowly and looks up at her. She's blushing, but she's looking at him. He's got a comic she'd drawn him in his hand, her hair is falling out of his shitty plait, and he's still too drunk to really think about things like consequences, so he grabs her chin with his right hand and kisses her.

He doesn't miss this time, and his lips land squarely on hers. Despite how drunk he is, the kiss is chaste. He doesn't open his mouth or anything. Bucky Barnes, always respectable.

He pulls away after a minute, and Steph looks embarrassed. Those consequences he'd so stupidly forgotten about a second ago seem to explode in his face. He nearly drops the comic when he tries to back away from her and into his tent.

"Right, I've got to go—"

"Wait, Bucky—"

"Night Steph!"

"James!" She snaps, and he freezes. Steph has her hands on her hips, and her lips are pushed together lightly, like she does when she's about to take a shot.

"Yes ma'am?"

"Did you mean to kiss me in that camp?"

He licks his lips and pretends that he's not panicking.

"Uh, well, maybe a little, but I thought it was—"

She slams her mouth onto his. That shuts him up pretty quickly.

Steph's a sloppy kisser, to be honest, but he drops the comic and puts his hands on her cheeks to try and show her. After a minute, they're doing something that actually resembles kissing. He shoves his fingers into her hair—the plait was already screwed up, anyway.

She breaks the kiss but doesn't move away. Her hands are on his shoulders and her lips are red and Bucky can feel his heart beating heavy and hot in his chest.

"Sorry." She says, and her voice is slightly breathy. "It's just, we're in a war. We don't really have time dance around whatever this is."

He snorts.

"Steph, I've been dancing around you since the day you knocked out Pat Henry with a metal pipe."

She beams up at him, and it's so fucking beautiful that Bucky has to kiss her again. She presses herself flush against him and he swears that his heart stops. He takes one of his hands out of her hair and wraps an arm around her waist instead. Their noses knock together oddly, so he solves the problem by moving to the corner of her lips, then her cheek, then the crook of her jaw. He puts his mouth on the soft spot above her shoulder and sucks. Her breathing hitches, and he almost stops before he remembers that her asthma isn't really a problem anymore, is it?

"Bucky, not now."

"Hm?" He doesn't move his face from the crook of her shoulder, but he stops kissing her.

"You're drunk."

"Why, Captain America," Bucky backs away and looks at her, fluttering his lashes, "afraid you're gonna talk advantage of little old me?"

She snorts, loud and ungraceful, before scooping the comic off of the ground and handing it to him.

"Tomorrow night, if you're not drunk, swing by my tent. Then we'll see who'll take advantage of who." She saunters away. He stands there slack-jawed for longer than he'd like to admit.

The next afternoon, he crouches on top of a train, the wind whipping across his face. Steph is crawling in front of him, and while he is definitely focused on the mission, there's a part of him that is focused solely on the way she looks in her uniform. Steph is way more responsible than him, though, and is all business. He watches her take a deep breath and drop down inside the train. Bucky follows without a second thought.

The guy is big, bigger than Pat Henry had been and with a lot more firepower. Bucky ducks behind his impromptu cover as another ray of blue… whatever it is, is shot at his head. When the firing stops, Bucky jerks over the top of the cover and shoots. The gun clicks uselessly. Out of ammo. Great.

He ducks back down just as the door bursts open and Steph comes barreling out like a war goddess. She flings her shield with stunning precision and nearly beheads the shooter. Sometimes, Bucky wishes he could write poetry. Somebody should be writing war epics about her. He stands up next to her.

"I had him on the ropes." Bucky says with a grin. She returns it, her smile big and toothy, and he's about to say something else when the wall next to him explodes.

Steph is thrown to the other side of the train car, and her shield drops to the ground. Bucky leaps at it and picks it up before the Hydra asshole can shoot again.

He throws the shield up in time, but the force of the shot sends him flying. For half a second, he thinks he was blown clean out of the train car. Somehow, though, he manages to grab onto one of the broken railings and hold.

"Bucky!"

He hears her come out onto the broken wall, and he clutches the railing a bit harder. God, don't let Steph fall. Please God, don't let her fall.

Her eyes are wide and her hand is reaching out to grab him and he almost can't hear the wind over the sound of his beating heart.

"Bucky!"

He stretches a hand out to grab hers, and there are two seconds of hope, of maybe, maybe. Then the railing makes a horrible screeching sound and breaks.

There isn't much, not really: the dropping feeling in his stomach as he plummets, the cold air rushing past his ears and face, and Steph screaming his name into the wind. He means to thank God that she didn't plummet too, but the fall is a lot shorter than he thought it'd be. All he has time to think about is that stupid tree with "StephandBucky" carved into the side. Deliriously, he wonders if it'll just say "Steph" now.

That's the last thought he has for a very long time.

AN: Please don't kill me. Part Two and Three will come soon. Check my profile out for specifics.