Bucky's post-capture debrief takes place over the next three days. To say that it doesn't go well is something of an understatement.
For one thing, Stevie's been spirited away and locked into meetings with the upper brass, the kind of closed-door discussions that Bucky's sergeant's stripes aren't enough to get him into. He knows that they're trying to figure out the best way to use their shiny new war hero, and it bothers him that he can't be there. It's not that Stevie isn't capable of holding her own—she's automatically the most stubborn person in any given room—but he doesn't like the idea of her going in without anybody who's unequivocally on her side.
That puts him in a less cooperative mood to start with, and it just gets worse from there. For starters, he does not want to go over the finer details of his time with Dr. Zola, but the intelligence officers and medical personnel won't leave it alone.
He initially tries to claim that he doesn't remember much, which is actually more or less true. That works all right until somebody mentions that Bucky is the only prisoner to go into the isolation ward, where the experiments were done, and come out alive.
One day Bucky's going to figure out which of the former prisoners offered that little tidbit, and make his annoyance clear.
At that point, there's no more dodging it. They're determined to figure out what Zola did to him, and if Bucky can't or won't tell them, they'll get their information another way.
Bucky gets sent back to medical. His first trip had been nothing more than a quick check immediately after they returned, to be sure he wasn't bleeding or hiding any broken bones. Bucky had handled it just fine, with nothing more than gritted teeth and a stoic expression. They'd pronounced him fit for debriefing, and that was the end of it.
The second trip, a day later, is different. Now they want to study him, try to figure out which drugs Zola put in his system, and what the effects were on him, if any. They want to know what Zola was trying to accomplish, and if he succeeded.
Bucky tries to buckle down and suffer through it in silence, but the first time somebody comes at him with a needle, something inside him snaps. He's not sure exactly what happens, because the next thing he remembers is his back pressed into the corner of the room, and a screaming medic at his feet. He's broken the man's arm, and the needle lies shattered on the floor.
They try to sedate him after that, which goes even more poorly. They end up having to call Stevie out of her upper-echelon meetings, afraid that Bucky might actually kill someone if they don't. She talks him down, but even with her at his side, reassuring him that all they want to do is take a quick blood sample, Bucky still won't let anybody put a needle in him. He just can't.
Stevie offers to go first, to show him that they don't mean any harm, but that backfires spectacularly. If he can't handle a needle coming close to him, it's somehow worse to watch one aiming for Stevie. He has a visceral reaction, his whole body swamped in pure terror. He jerks her away from the medic before he gets anywhere close to drawing blood, protective instincts screaming.
Then the medics suggest that Stevie attempt to get the blood sample herself. She's skeptical, but agrees to give it a try. Only, as soon as Stevie touches his arm, needle in her other hand, Bucky starts to shake and hyperventilate. He'd have let her go through with it—he'd never have attacked her, no matter what—but she immediately backs off, apologetic. When the medics try to encourage her to do it anyway, she just shakes her head and refuses.
The medics confer for a little while. When they come back, they have a new idea: Since Stevie is the only one who can get close to Bucky safely, they ask her to hold him down while they get the samples they need. Bucky flinches as soon as he hears the words, because the very idea of being restrained like that, even by Stevie, makes him panic almost worse than the needle itself. (He has a flash of memory, of straps on a gurney, digging into his stomach and thighs, so tight that he can't even thrash or writhe when the pain hits—)
His flinch must have been visible, because Stevie refuses again. She even goes a step further, and makes it very clear that nobody is going to do anything to Bucky without his permission. No restraints, no holding him down, no drugging him, not even any tricking or misleading or surprising him.
Some officers show up, and there's a lot of shouting after that, about valuable contributions to the war effort and irreplaceable data and a responsibility to the scientific community. Or something along those lines. Bucky doesn't really pay attention. He sits on a table off to the side, trying to get his shaking under control. Anyway, he always lets Stevie fight these sorts of battles—verbal ones, that is—without him. He only steps in when she's about to get pummeled.
Then he remembers that she's got a different body now, healthy and strong, and she doesn't need him for that anymore.
Eventually, Stevie gets her way. (She usually does, one way or another.) The brass have decided that whatever they could learn from studying Bucky isn't worth angering Captain America, not when they're in the middle of negotiating how she's going to work for them. They need her to cooperate, to balance her propaganda duties with real missions, and she's made it clear where her priorities are.
They let him go, and Bucky sleeps for sixteen hours straight. He wakes up feeling human again, more or less. There's still an inexplicable ache deep in his bones, but it's slowly fading. He can deal with that, even if it never goes away completely. If a little lingering pain is the worst thing to come out of this ordeal, he'll count himself lucky.
His appetite comes back with a vengeance, and the third day after being rescued he manages to demolish at least four full meals at the mess hall. Stevie joins him for one of them, laughing as they clean five plates between them. That's how Bucky learns that her metabolism has been increased as a side-effect of her transformation.
He spends the rest of that day bouncing around from one interrogator (relax, Sergeant; it's a debrief, not an interrogation) to another, answering questions. If they can't study him, they'll work on dragging every last detail out of his memory. The more they poke and prod at him, the more Bucky starts to recall. He talks about the experiments as much as he's able, from the colors of the drugs in their vials to how each one made him feel, after. (Hot, cold, blurry, sharp, loose, tight. Empty.)
That's when the nightmares start, either because of the questions or just because he's finally sleeping normally instead of passing out from exhaustion. He's not the only rescued prisoner to have them, of course, but their nightly terrors are of cells and guard batons and people disappearing, one by one, never to be seen again. Bucky dreams of rough straps on a cold table, electrodes on his skin, the bite of a needle and his blood like flames, burning him alive from the inside out.
He wakes up screaming so loudly his throat burns, startling every man in his barracks. They splash some cold water on him and do their best to ignore him, but it doesn't last. Somebody reports him after the fourth night, and Bucky is unceremoniously moved to a private tent near the edge of camp. It doesn't stop the sound completely, but it dampens it. It lets people pretend they can't hear him, at least.
The next night, when Bucky bolts upright in a cold sweat, half-screaming and half-crying, he finds Stevie holding him. She doesn't ask him what he was dreaming about, or what happened to him in that place. She doesn't even offer him the pointless platitudes he's been getting from the medics, officers, and men in his barracks. She just pulls his head into her lap and runs her fingers through his hair, soft and sweet.
Bucky curls into her, some buried instinct recognizing her as safe, as home. He falls back asleep.
The nightmares don't magically vanish, but at least when he shakes himself awake it's to Stevie's calming voice instead of his own ragged screams. It's probably not worth the risk of somebody catching them (or the way he's preventing Stevie from getting much sleep of her own), but just for this one night Bucky doesn't care. For just one night, he's going to let himself have this.
Just one, though. He won't be the reason she gets caught.
When the debriefings are finally over, all the rescued men who haven't been returned to their original units, plus Captain America, are released (remanded) to London. Bucky spends the ride and the first week of semi-leave unapologetically drinking anything and everything he can find.
He's only really after enough of a buzz to dampen the persistent nightmares, but that seems like it takes more alcohol than it used to. He forgoes beer entirely, because he might as well be drinking water for all the effect it has on him. He needs the hard stuff to feel it at all, and even that doesn't hit him like it should. It takes an entire bottle of whiskey to get him to sleep through a full night.
He's never been skittish about alcohol or shy about drinking, but he's never before crossed that invisible line that he associates with having a problem. For the first time, his desire to escape his life—even for a little while—overcomes his fear of turning into his father. He manages to stay deliciously non-sober for several days in a row, and sleeps better than he has since he first came to Europe.
That ends abruptly one morning at the end of their first week in London, when he's bounced out of his cot (he's back to sleeping in the barracks, now that he's self-medicating away his nightmares) by an unsympathetic Timothy Dugan.
"What the hell?" Bucky snarls from where he's landed on the floor, one hand on his pounding head.
Dugan stares at him for a moment. He's a big, thick-chested private from Boston, several years older than Bucky and built like a boxer. He'd been in the 107th before they got captured by HYDRA, and he's one of the few men from that regiment who survived long enough for Stevie to rescue them. He presumably got volunteered to deal with Bucky by the rest of the rescued prisoners, on the premise that he probably knows him better than anybody else who isn't Captain America.
"You trying to kill yourself, Barnes?" Dugan asks him, mustache twitching in disapproval. "Because a bullet is a whole lot faster than alcohol poisoning, and there's no shortage of Nazis who would be willing to oblige you."
"No," Bucky says. He tries to get his feet under him, but can't quite manage it. He sits down on the floor instead. "And even if I was, it ain't your business."
Dugan lets out a disappointed huff. "It is when I have to tell the Captain that you're not fit for duty."
Bucky winces.
Nobody is supposed to know yet, but the military has the best (worst?) grapevine in the world. Rumor has it that the brass have finally decided to unleash Captain America on Schmidt and HYDRA, and Steve Rogers is being given leave to pick his own team. Everybody thinks that he's going to choose from the prisoners he rescued, because there isn't a one of them that wouldn't follow him straight to the gates of hell after what he did.
And everyone who was actually there? Who witnessed the way Captain America tore through that base, asking everybody he met about one Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, without any regard for anything else? Well, they all know that the Captain's first pick is going to be his best friend, the man he risked everything to save in the first place.
"That's not fair," Bucky says, slurring his words only a little. "Using Stevie against me like that."
Dugan's bushy eyebrows slide up his forehead, toward his bowler hat. (Bucky belatedly remembers that he's supposed to call her 'Steve' in front of other people. Or 'Captain.')
"I'll go get him, if I have to," Dugan warns. "Maybe he can knock some sense into you."
He doesn't leave to go get Stevie, though. Instead, he helps Bucky to his feet, points him in the direction of the nearest showers, and lets him know that 'the guys'—the Allied company Stevie rescued, or at least the ones who are still in London and haven't been reassigned yet—are meeting down at one of the local pubs that survived the Blitz. Talk among the troops says that tonight is when Captain America is going to ask for volunteers for his special squad.
"Be there," Dugan tells him, just before shoving Bucky into the showers (clothes and all). "Don't make the Captain come looking for you."
"Yeah, yeah," Bucky says. He snatches a towel and tries to keep his balance now that he doesn't have Dugan's arm supporting him.
"And for God's sake, Sarge," Dugan adds, eyes narrowed in warning. "Be sober. He didn't jump thirty miles behind enemy lines to save your life, just to watch you throw it away."
/~*~/
One winter, Stevie catches a cold.
Every winter, Stevie catches something, but this one is different. It turns into a fever and a painful sore throat. Two weeks later, Stevie's Ma—who's a nurse—tells them that it's Scarlet Fever. Bucky's Ma—who isn't a nurse, but sometimes acts like it—says that he can't spend afternoons sitting with her on her bed like he always does, not until she gets better, for fear of him catching it.
Bucky goes anyway. He's twelve, practically a man grown, and Scarlet Fever is a kids' disease. Even Stevie, who's only eleven, is a little old for it. She's so tiny and frail that it must have thought she was younger.
Bucky hates when Stevie is sick because her eyes get glassy and she has no energy to run around with him and get into trouble. (Not that there's ever all that much running involved, seeing as how she gets an asthma attack from going up and down a couple flights of stairs.) Still, sometimes it's nice when it's cold outside to curl up under a quilt and let Stevie put her head on his shoulder or in his lap while he reads out from her school books. When she's running a fever her eyes don't always work right, so Bucky keeps her caught up.
Three weeks in, though, Bucky starts to get worried. Stevie hasn't been sick this long all at once since she got pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. She's losing what little weight she had on her bony frame, and her fever won't go away. It's baking her skin, making it flake and peel. Her pretty blonde hair is lank and sweat-damp and lies in curls across her forehead. Her cheeks are too pink, unnatural. Some days she doesn't wake up but maybe once or twice the whole time he's there, for hours and hours, and he has to read out loud just to himself.
Bucky wants his Stevie back.
One day Stevie doesn't wake up at all. Bucky's Ma comes to fetch him home (she gave up on keeping him away the third time he snuck out his window, and has decided that watching him is the easiest way to keep him healthy), but Bucky won't leave. He's staying until Stevie wakes up, so he can say hello. They haven't gone an entire day without speaking to each other since they met, save for that trip his folks made him take to visit his grandparents in Indiana last year.
In the kitchen, Stevie's Ma is crying. Bucky's Ma gives her a hug and rubs little circles on her back. She decides to stay here tonight, and she says that Bucky can, too.
Bucky falls asleep curled up on the covers of Stevie's bed, one of her hands in his own.
He wakes up around midnight, when Stevie's Ma comes in to try to wake her up and get her to drink some cool water. It doesn't work, and her hands are shaking as she turns around.
"Don't worry, Mrs. Rogers," Bucky says. He hasn't let go of Stevie's hand all night. "She's going to wake up soon."
"I hope so, sweetheart," Stevie's Ma says. (She doesn't believe in lying, which is where Bucky reckons Stevie got it from.)
"I'll let you know," Bucky promises. "As soon as she wakes up, I'll come tell you."
She kisses his forehead before she leaves. "Thank you for watching over her, James."
At dawn, Stevie's Ma and Bucky's Ma are joined in the kitchen by Father Donnelly. Stevie's Ma is crying again, and when the old buzzard comes into the bedroom and starts to read Stevie her last rites, Bucky wants to punch him right in his ugly nose.
He shouldn't be here; Stevie is going to be fine. Bucky's not going to let anything happen to her. Ever since he pulled her out of that first alley, all bloody knuckles and scuffed-up knees, he's been looking out for her. She's his best friend.
He leans over while the priest is still chanting, ignoring the watching adults, and kisses her forehead right where her Ma had kissed him a few hours ago. "Don't worry, Stevie," he says, not much louder than a whisper. He presses his forehead against hers, like maybe he can make her hear him if he thinks loud enough. "Nothing bad is going to happen to you, not while I'm around."
Father Donnelly finishes his prayers and crosses himself. He goes back out to wait in the kitchen, and Bucky's Ma tries to get Bucky to leave, too. She tells him that Stevie's Ma might want to be alone with her daughter, for a little while.
Bucky turns his best blue-eyed hopeful look on Stevie's Ma, and she doesn't even make him ask.
"I think Stephanie would rather you be here," Stevie's Ma says. She's almost smiling. "If it's all right with you, of course, Martha."
Bucky's Ma sighs. "I don't think I can keep him away without tying him up or locking him in the closet," she admits. "Even then I'm not sure he wouldn't find a way. He wants to be here."
"Then he's welcome to stay," Stevie's Ma says. She wipes at her cheeks and tries to smile at Bucky. "Maybe Steph can tell you're here. She'd like that, I think. To have a friend with her."
Bucky's Ma does go home, but she keeps coming back every couple of hours. (One time, she brings his Pa with her, but they only stay long enough to say he was sorry Stevie was so sick, and ask if there was anything Stevie's Ma needed.) Every time, his Ma asks Bucky if he's ready to come home.
Every time, Bucky says no. He doesn't leave that bedroom for the next eighteen hours, except to eat something real quick and go to the bathroom, and to help Stevie's Ma with the dishes at dinner, because that would just be rude if he didn't. Other people come in and out, but he makes them move around him. His spot is right there on Stevie's bed, holding her hand.
When Stevie wakes up a day later—woozy and dehydrated and still very sick, even if everyone says that she's pulled through the dangerous part—Bucky makes sure that his smile is the first thing she sees.
/~*~/
The pub is dark, and smells of smoke and sweat and burnt copper. Bucky is sitting at the bar in a corner, back to the main room, nursing a drink he doesn't actually taste. Behind him, Stevie is making her case to her final choices. She's narrowed it down to five men, including a Brit (James Falsworth) and a Frenchman (Jacques Dernier). The other three are Americans: Jim Morita, who was in Bucky's cell in the prison camp (and caught some flak from the others for his Japanese features), a Negro by the name of Gabe Jones that Bucky hasn't talked to yet, and none other than Timothy Dugan from the old 107th.
Even from the corner of his eyes, Bucky can tell that Stevie's nervous as she starts in on her recruitment speech. It's obvious in the way that she's conspicuously not fidgeting. It's absurd, because the entire bar would join her special team in a heartbeat. Anybody who isn't sitting at that table already is jealous or disappointed (or Bucky). No one is going to turn her down.
Bucky slowly rotates his glass on the dark, mottled wood grain. It leaves behind a ring of condensation that rapidly dissipates in the warm night. A few seconds later, there's no sign his glass was ever there. He isn't normally a maudlin drunk (and he isn't even drinking) but it makes him think, about marks in sand that fade into nothingness, washed away when the tide changes. Time erases everything, in the end.
Bucky stares into the amber liquid that he isn't drinking, and wonders if he's fading away. He wonders if there'll be anything left of the Brooklyn boy who went to war, when this is over. He already feels lost, most of the time. A pale imitation of himself. If he slipped away, would he notice?
Would Stevie?
Some things never change, though, like the way Bucky automatically turns when he hears Stevie coming up behind him. He's drawn to her, forever caught in her gravity, helplessly pulled along in her wake. There was a time when he never wanted to be anywhere else. Now he doesn't know what he wants. He doesn't even know if he wants anything at all.
He smiles by reflex, and hopes she can't see the way it doesn't reach his eyes. "Hey."
Stevie looks happy. It's a smaller, more intimate version of her triumph when she led the rescued men back into camp. "That went better than I expected," she says.
Bucky snorts and pushes at his glass, sliding it back and forth across the table. Of course Stevie is the only one who doubted for a second that the men would follow her. "I told you," he says. "They're all crazy."
Stevie studies him for a moment as she sits down, taking the bar stool next to him. "What about you?" she asks, quietly and a little too serious for his liking. Her mouth tilts, self-deprecating. "You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?"
"Hell no," Bucky says instantly. He sees her face start to fall, just for the briefest instant, before he continues, "That little punk from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him."
She lowers her eyes at that, embarrassed. She gives him a soft, fond look that's only half-hidden by her dropped head.
It allows Bucky to center himself, because this is all he needs. Even if he doesn't know himself anymore—doesn't trust himself anymore—he doesn't have to, as long as Stevie can look at him like that. She looks at him like he's worth something, like he means something, and that's enough for him.
He smirks, because it's his job to make jokes when things get too serious, and leans forward conspiratorially. "You're keeping the outfit, though, right?"
Stevie looks thoughtful. "You know?" she says, smiling. "It's kind of growing on me."
The bartender puts down a tray of drinks in front of her, and Stevie carries it back over to her table of new recruits. She passes the beers out to a round of cheers.
Bucky goes back to staring at his drink.
Stevie keeps drifting between bar and table for the rest of the evening, carrying empty glasses one direction and new drinks the other. Around them, the bar slowly starts to empty out. Many of the disappointed hopefuls who didn't make the team have long since left to drown their sorrows in another establishment, where they won't have to listen to raucous celebrating of the five who did.
"Come on, Buck," Stevie says at one point, waiting for the bartender to refill her tray, again. (Just how much are they going to drink before the night is over? And Dugan had the nerve to chide Bucky about being sober tonight.) She claps him on the shoulder, jarring him slightly because she's so much stronger than either of them remember. "You should drink with them. You know, make friends."
Bucky shrugs and continues to rotate his glass. The bartender has long since given up on trying to get him anything else.
"Bucky," Stevie says, pleading.
Bucky gives her a tired smile. "Dugan and Morita already know me; Dugan from the 107th, and Morita and I were in the same cell and work crew, before." He doesn't continue. Stevie already knows what goes in that gap, what words he won't say. "Falsworth is a lieutenant, but you set up the team with me as your second-in-command, as an NCO. That basically busts him back down to Private."
"I trust you," Stevie says instantly. "I'm sure he's capable, but you'll know what I'm thinking before I say it. That could make a difference, in the field."
Bucky waves her off. "That's not the point. I'm sure he understands that. But if he's going to follow orders from me, I need to earn his respect. That won't happen until we go on a mission and he sees how I perform under pressure."
Stevie doesn't look particularly happy about it, but she nods. "All right, then. What about Dernier and Jones?"
He taps his fingers on the table. "Dernier understands English just fine, but either can't or won't speak it, so any conversation with him is going to be a little one-sided. And Jones is going to get along just fine with anybody who doesn't take issue with his skin color."
Stevie gives him one of her disappointed looks. "I just think you ought to be friendly with them, Buck. These are the guys we're going to trust to have our back. I'd think it would be good if they actually, you know, liked us first."
"That's your area," Bucky says, sitting back slightly from the bar. "I'm a sniper. I'm supposed to be scary, and a little aloof."
Stevie frowns.
Bucky raises his eyebrows. "What?"
"You, scary," Stevie says, shaking her head. "I have a hard time with that one."
Bucky smiles, but it's cold and predatory and aimed at his drink, not at her. "You've never seen me with a rifle," he says flatly.
Stevie looks like she doesn't know quite what to say to that.
Luckily, the budding unease between them is interrupted by something that thoroughly distracts them both: Across the bar, headed for Stevie like a bullet, is a gorgeous dame in a knockout red dress. She's wearing high heels with drawn-on nylons, and her dark hair is elegantly styled into soft waves. She has curves in all the right places and carries herself with an air of confidence and authority that Bucky appreciates. He lets out a low whistle, just loud enough for Stevie to hear him.
Bucky isn't the only one who's seen her, of course. Around them, the bar goes almost silent.
"It's Peggy," Stevie hisses under her breath. She looks at least half-terrified. "Be nice."
Bucky grins.
/~*~/
The second time that Bucky kisses Stevie, he's fifteen years old. (On the forehead when she was sick doesn't count, because that was different, and anyway she was asleep at the time.)
It's a Friday night, and for the first time in his life Bucky Barnes is getting drunk. The day before, he had swiped a little bottle of liquor from Old Man Fulton down the street, who bought from the bootleggers and distributed to the neighborhood at a friendly markup.
Stevie had been reluctant from the start, of course, not because she had anything against alcohol in general but because it was illegal. Bucky had only gotten her to come along due to the technicality that drinking alcohol was perfectly fine; it was selling or transporting it that was a crime. It didn't even count as buying, because Bucky had nicked it while Old Man Fulton wasn't paying attention, and therefore hadn't paid for it.
They go out to the park behind Bucky's apartment building, with a single old lamp between them and a couple of blankets. It's October, so the nights are starting to get chilly, but it's not too bad. They huddle up together on the grass, sitting on one blanket and sharing the other, and pass the contraband bottle back and forth.
Stevie doesn't end up drinking much of it, which is how Bucky ends up pretty far gone by the time the little bottle is empty. That's good though, because even at fourteen years old Stevie is still tiny and scrawny, and she's only two weeks out of her last bout with the flu. It's probably not a good idea for her to drink too much, so Bucky doesn't complain.
She's got enough in her to ward off the worst of the night's chill, though, and that's kind of a shame. It means Bucky doesn't have an excuse to put his arm around her and pull her close, which is something he's just recently decided he likes doing whenever there's a good opportunity. It's just, she fits so nicely under his arm, always just the right height even though they've done a fair bit of growing since they met six years ago. (Well, Bucky's grown. Stevie is still so tiny. It's adoarable.)
Stevie smacks him, and Bucky thinks maybe he said that last part out loud by accident.
They sit there together under the Brooklyn stars—
("Don't be silly, Bucky; they're everybody's stars. Not like you can only see them here."
"Well, we're in Brooklyn, ain't we? So these are our stars.")
—and talk about everything, and nothing.
They start with school, and whether or not Bucky is going to stick with it all the way through graduation. Stevie thinks he should get a diploma, if he could, but of course Stevie would think that. She likes school, always has. Bucky doesn't much see the point.
Sooner or later his Pa is going to put his foot down about helping out for real around the garage, or else he's going to get kicked out of the house altogether. Bucky doesn't need two more years of school to do the job his Pa taught him when he was eleven, and even if he wins that argument and gets a job elsewhere, a diploma won't help him find work down at the docks or on a factory floor. Seems like a big waste of time, to him.
Stevie, on the other hand, should definitely stay in school. Just because she enjoys it, if nothing else. But she's smart, too, and even if there was no way her Ma could ever afford to send her to one of those women's colleges, she ought to learn as much as she can in the meantime.
"I don't want to go to one of those colleges for girls," Stevie says frankly. She's leaning back against her palms, head tipped back, looking at the stars.
Bucky's just lucid enough to realize that he's staring at her, and just drunk enough not to care if she catches him doing it. "So what do you want to do?" he asks.
She shrugs. "You mean, if we had the money?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know," Stevie says. She tilts her head sideways to look at him. "Art school, maybe. If I could find one that would take me, and we could afford it."
Bucky thinks he should have guessed that. It's one of the few ways Stevie can help out her Ma, by sketching portraits of rich folks or tourists in the park for a nickel a piece in the summertime. He's never really seen her sketchbook, the one she carries around everywhere, because she's shy about it, but her portraits are really good.
(Bucky has one of his Ma, one of his Pa, one of the three of them together, and one of Bucky by himself in his room. He didn't really need them, but it was one of the only ways he could get Stevie to take money from him without kicking up a fuss about it. Even then, she had tried to do them for free, saying it was just practice. She'll take supplies, though, so Bucky often drops by with a new charcoal pencil or two.)
"Art school," Bucky says, mulling it over. "Okay."
Stevie kicks his ankle under the blanket. "Don't make fun of me."
"I'm not," Bucky says. "Look, we'll find a way to make it work, all right?"
She gives him a skeptical look.
"No, I mean it. Listen." Bucky sits up straighter and gestures her closer, even though she's already got her hip pressed up against his. "Listen. You'll be sketching in the park one day, and somebody rich is going to see you and realize just how good you are."
Stevie flushes across her pale cheeks. It's very pretty in the light from their lamp.
"And then," Bucky says, punctuating his point with the hand he's still using to gesture wildly about, "they'll give you money for art school. You'll ace it, and people will come from all over to buy your—uh—sketches?"
"I'd like to learn to paint," Stevie says softly.
"Paintings!" Bucky says. "They'll buy your paintings, and you'll be rich. And famous." He grins at her. "It'll be great. You'll never have to worry about money again."
Stevie hums in mock-agreement. "And where will you be, while I'm off being a rich and famous woman painter, Mr. Barnes?"
"Mooching off you, of course," Bucky says instantly. "You'll let me sleep on your couch, right? You wouldn't forget about your old pal Bucky, even when everybody knows your name."
"Of course not," Stevie says. She sounds almost upset, like he's offended her by asking. "Bucky and Stevie, yeah? Can't let that change."
"Bucky and Stevie," Bucky agrees, because he likes the sound of that just as much tonight as he did at nine years old. "Always."
Their talk drifts after that. Baseball, and if Brooklyn (they're the Dodgers now, not the Robins) are going to make a good run next year. Whether Governor Roosevelt is going to win the election, and if he can really get the economy back on track after the market crash ruined everything. Whether or not they're going to go see the new picture sometime this month, and if it'll be better or worse than that jungle movie—Tarzan the Ape Man, Stevie reminds him—that they saw at the beginning of the summer.
It's late by then, and even though Bucky is oddly reluctant to get up, Stevie chivvies him upright and walks him home. His feet are all funny and not moving the right way, so she tucks up under one of his shoulders, one arm around his waist, and guides him down the street. (Bucky keeps stumbling, just a little, even after he works his feet out, because he doesn't want her to let go.)
They go up to Bucky's apartment, even though he tries to be a gentleman and walk her home first. Stevie won't hear of it, though, saying that Bucky would end up falling asleep on a street corner or under some stairs if he had to walk back to his place by himself. In typical Stevie fashion, she just out-stubborns him until she gets her way. (She doesn't have to fight so hard; Bucky will always give her what she wants. Anything she wants, in the whole world.)
When they get up to the landing outside his apartment, Stevie props Bucky up against the wall, puts the lamp and blankets down next to him, and starts rifling through his pockets looking for his key. Her tiny hands are deft as she goes from one pocket to another, face scrunched up in concentration, because she's not anywhere near as drunk as Bucky but she did help him empty that bottle.
Bucky starts listing sideways against the wall, so he puts out his hands. They fall on Stevie's shoulders, and she takes a moment to steady him.
"You okay, Buck?" she asks, looking up at him.
Bucky nods. His head tips down toward her.
Stevie tilts her head back automatically, probably assuming that he's going to touch their foreheads together, the way he always does when he has something important to say. Maybe that had been the original plan; Bucky's not sure. Before he quite knows what he's doing, he's pressing a kiss to her mouth instead.
Or at least, he tries. He is, after all, very drunk for the first time in his life. He doesn't yet have any experience in maneuvering under the influence. He ends up mostly kissing just her bottom lip and a bit of her jaw instead, but he doesn't let that stop him. He got a good set of kissing lessons from Marlene Jacobs last spring, so at least he knows what he's about, this time.
Stevie goes kind of still in front of him, like she doesn't know what to do. When Bucky pulls back a little, trying to gauge her reaction, she shakes her head at him.
"Your breath smells awful," she tells him.
Bucky blinks.
Stevie goes right back to searching through his pockets like nothing happened. She comes up with his key a moment later, and steps away from him to unlock the door. She manages it on the second try, and then drops the key back into the pocket where she found it.
Bucky belatedly reaches for her, but she's already slipped too far away, and his hand misses.
"Drink some water before you pass out," Stevie says. She has that look on her face that means she's being very serious, even though she's sort of forgotten why. "Ma said that was important."
Bucky blinks again. "Okay."
Stevie gives him a little shove through the door, almost making him stumble, and places the lamp and blankets into his arms. "See you tomorrow?" she asks.
"Yeah, of course," Bucky says.
"Night," Stevie says, like always, and shuts the door in his face.
Bucky wakes up the next morning with a headache, a bad taste in his mouth, and a lingering sense of unease in his stomach. The first two he attributes to the alcohol, and the last to the failed kiss. He gets himself all worked up to make an apology, because Stevie clearly didn't appreciate it.
When he sees her that afternoon, though, she doesn't seem mad at him. What's more, there's nothing awkward or strained about them at all. Bucky rapidly abandons his apology plan in favor of just forgetting that it ever happened.
They never do talk about it.
/~*~/
Agent Margaret Carter, of the Strategic Scientific Reserve Special Operations Division, has come to the bar with news. Apparently Howard Stark (yes, that one) has been working on some new equipment for Captain America's special team, and he wants Stevie to come give her opinions first thing in the morning.
Stevie agrees to do so, bright and early.
Bucky watches them from off to the side, eyes flicking back and forth between them. It's obvious that Agent Carter's stated reason is nothing more than pretense, at best. She's really come here for Stevie, hence the incredible red dress. She couldn't be more obvious if she tried.
Stevie, typically, doesn't seem to understand this. Or if she does, she's not confident enough to do anything about it.
Bucky, good friend that he is, does his level best to flirt with Agent Carter to alleviate the tension. He's soundly ignored for his efforts.
Stevie is staring after Agent Carter as she walks away, mouth slightly agape. Carter left them with a not-at-all subtle comment about waiting 'for the right partner.' It's just barely one step removed from saying 'for you, Captain Rogers.'
Bucky sticks his hands in his pockets. "Huh," he says. "I'm invisible."
Stevie gives him a questioning look.
"I'm turning into you," Bucky jokes, deadpan. "It's like a horrible nightmare."
Stevie finally cracks a smile. "Cheer up, Buck," she says, suddenly chipper. "Maybe she's got a friend."
"You really like her, don't you?" Bucky asks.
Stevie shrugs a bit, but the hint of color in her cheeks and the way she ducks her head a bit tells him he's on the right track.
"Come on," Bucky encourages. "Tell me."
Stevie gets a far-off look in her eyes. "She saw me," she says. "She looked at me when I was still skinny and useless, and she saw me anyway."
Bucky punches her lightly in the arm, still not used to doing that at his own level instead of having to reach down. "Skinny, yes," he says. "You were never useless, though."
"Everyone else thought so," Stevie says. It comes out matter-of-fact, not bitter, because one thing Stevie Rogers never indulged was self-pity. "Everybody except you. Then a doctor from Queens by way of Germany. And her."
Bucky raises his eyebrows. "Well, what are you doing wasting time with me and Captain America's new recruits, then?" he asks her. "Go after her."
Stevie suddenly gets awkward, crossing her arms over her chest and fidgeting. "I really should be here," she says. "We'll get our first assignment in a couple of weeks, at the latest, and we've got some training to do ..."
Bucky gives her a flat look. "Nobody's doing any training tonight. The rest of the new team is about three gallons of beer too drunk for that. Which, conveniently, rules out tomorrow as well, at least in the morning."
Stevie chews on her bottom lip. It's as cute now as it was they day they met. "I think ... I mean, I'm not sure, but I think she's seeing Stark."
"Stevie," Bucky says, smiling. "She wore that red dress for you. She wants you to go after her."
Stevie brightens a little. "You think so?"
"Yeah," Bucky says. "And I know you want to. So just go."
Stevie continues to fidget. "I don't know. It seems like a bad idea."
"You said she was there, right? For the procedure?" Bucky lowers his voice just enough so that nobody can overhear and wonder what he's talking about. "So you don't have to worry about her getting too close and figuring it out. She already knows, and she's still interested."
Stevie gets a goofy sort of smile on her face. "I don't think it made the slightest bit of difference to her, when she found out. Treated me exactly the same."
Bucky slaps her on the back. "See? I knew it. You're totally head-over-heels for this gal, aren't you?"
"Well," Stevie says quickly. "I mean, she's swell, but we haven't—I mean, we never even—"
"Hey." Bucky's voice drops even further. "Don't forget. I know what you look like, when you're in love."
"Yeah," Stevie says, just as quiet. There's a note of sadness in it. "You do."
"So go get her," Bucky repeats. "Don't make me tell you again, punk."
"Jerk," Stevie says automatically. She throws her arms around Bucky's shoulders in a gruff, manly hug (because people are watching them, and it would look odd for her to touch her forehead to his the way they normally would), and uses it as a cover to whisper in his ear, "Still my guy, Buck?"
"Like you're going to get rid of me that easy," Bucky replies. He speaks at normal volume, because that's just the sort of thing a soldier might say to his best friend who's ditching him for a pretty lady. "I want all the details, in the morning."
"Bucky!" Stevie says, scandalized. "I'm just going to talk to her!"
"Sure," Bucky says. "Have fun."
Stevie walks off toward where Agent Carter disappeared, shaking her head.
Bucky waits until she's almost at the door before lifting his glass in a salute. "Good luck, Captain!" he yells at the top of his lungs. "Go get her!"
The bar erupts into cheers, and the last thing he sees is Stevie rolling her eyes at him as she slips through the doorway.