Stevie hauls Bucky out of his cot the next morning entirely too early, considering how late it was when he finally left the pub last night. Luckily, he doesn't have a hangover, because Dugan had more-or-less shamed him into being sober for a while. Unfortunately, the lack of alcohol in his system meant the nightmares came back. A hangover might have been easier to work around than an almost complete lack of sleep altogether. At least he'd managed not to wake up screaming and bother everybody else in his barracks.
"Steve," Bucky mumbles, remembering this time to use the male form of her name. He's trying, unsuccessfully, to fend off the too-large, too-strong hands that are pulling him upright. "What time is it?"
"After 0900," Stevie says, no sympathy in her voice. In fact, she sounds excited. "Come on, get up! I want to show you something."
Bucky pouts, in the way that only James Barnes can, but he gets up.
(He ignores the snickering and hidden smiles from the other men around the room, who are watching with barely concealed amusement. It's not every day they get to see Captain America roughhousing with his sergeant.)
"Coffee," Bucky says flatly as he pulls on his uniform jacket, which was the only piece of clothing he'd discarded before falling into his cot last night. He should probably also lace up his boots. "You looking this chipper is going to require coffee for me to deal with you."
Stevie produces a pouch of instant coffee out of a pocket in her Army uniform. That must be a perk of being a commissioned officer. (Not that Bucky's jealous or anything. He's not. Not even if Stevie jumped about a dozen ranks ahead of him based on a stage name, when he earned his sergeant's stripes the hard way. She deserves it, if not before the rescue then certainly after.)
Bucky's halfway through the little cup of coffee—cold, which doesn't do it any favors, but he's not exactly drinking it for the taste anyway—before he notices the giant metal disc Stevie is carrying around. He rubs at his face, but it doesn't go away. He puts down his battered, dented cup and stares.
"What is that?" Bucky asks.
Stevie grins, looking entirely too pleased with herself. "It's a shield," she says, as if that explains anything. "To replace the one from the old costume." She hefts it, beaming like a lunatic. "Stark made it for me. It's vibranium, which is apparently really rare."
Bucky continues to stare. "It's, uh, shiny?" he offers. He's not sure what else to say.
"I think I might paint it," Stevie says thoughtfully, like she hadn't even heard him. "Anyway, it deflects bullets. That's why I need you." She gestures urgently toward the exit. "We're going to the shooting range."
Bucky is still staring. He thinks he needs about three more cups of coffee before he's ready for this.
"Come on," Stevie says, impatient. "I want you to shoot at me."
"What?"
Stevie grins again, wide and joyous. Before Bucky can say anything else, she's already turning around and heading for the door. He has no choice but to follow her, trailing her through the bustling London base.
"You want me to what?" Bucky tries again.
Stevie rolls her eyes. "You're supposed to be a crack shot, aren't you? Or so I hear, anyway."
Bucky reminds himself that Stevie still hasn't seen him with a rifle. For a moment, he's suddenly struck by the certainty that he doesn't want her to, even though she'll need a thorough understanding of his limits and abilities if she's going to use him effectively in the field.
"Come on, Buck," Stevie says. "I have to test the shield out somehow. I want you to shoot me."
Bucky stops dead, forcing Stevie to halt and turn to face him. "I am not going to shoot you!"
It comes out a little louder than he really intended. Half the nearby base personnel stop in their morning activities to stare at them.
"Shoot at me," Stevie corrects, shrugging her broad shoulders. "Or, actually, at the shield."
"No," Bucky says, still incredulous. "I'm not going to shoot at you, or near you, or around you. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"
"Of course," Stevie says immediately. "Why do you think I'm asking you?"
Bucky crosses his arms. "If I say no, you're just going to go find somebody else, aren't you?"
Stevie shifts her weight from foot to foot, a little guiltily. "Well, Peggy—Agent Carter, I mean—already, um. Demonstrated. That the shield can stop bullets."
Bucky rubs at the bridge of his nose. Why does being around Stevie these days always seem to give him a headache? "While you were holding it?"
Stevie nods.
"Jesus Christ, Steve," Bucky says. "How badly did you mess up last night?"
"No, it wasn't—" Stevie swallows. "It was this morning." She looks halfway between mortified and deeply, deeply impressed. "She thought—well, she saw—anyway, she made her point. But I'm sure she'd shoot at me again if I asked nicely."
Bucky tenses all over at the thought. Stevie, in somebody's cross-hairs, with only a thin disc of metal to protect her. A finger on the trigger that isn't his. "Absolutely not," he says.
Stevie cocks her head mock-thoughtfully. "Peggy's a fantastic shot, though," she says, egging him on. "You know, she once shot a cab driver right in the head from maybe fifty yards away? With a pistol?"
Bucky's voice turns into a growl. "Nobody is shooting at you except me," he says. "I don't care how good a shot they are."
"Well," Stevie says, drawing the word out. "You don't seem all that keen, Buck. Maybe I should—"
"Like hell," Bucky snaps. If she's going to do something this stupid, he's damn well going to make sure that he's the one keeping her safe. "No one but me, understood?"
"Understood, Sergeant," Stevie says. There's a satisfied glint in her eye, the little punk. "Although I can't speak for HYDRA. I have a feeling they'll be doing a lot of shooting at me, sooner or later."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," Bucky promises, a dark edge in his tone. He's already walking toward the range, and he has to turn back over his shoulder to say, "You coming or what?"
Stevie grins at him one more time. "Right behind you, Buck."
/~*~/
The first time that Bucky Barnes kills a man, he's in a nameless field somewhere in Europe. He's twenty-five, and he does it with a sniper rifle. He hesitates for the briefest instant before he pulls the trigger, and he sees the man crumple to the ground in his dreams for weeks.
The first time that Bucky tries to kill a man, he's in a dark street behind a cheap bar in Brooklyn. He's seventeen, and he goes after the guy with his bare hands. He never loses a moment of sleep over it, over what he almost did. Sometimes he even thinks back on it, and wishes that he hadn't let the guy live.
It happens like this.
It's a Friday night, and Bucky's been working extra hours down at the docks all week because Stevie's birthday is coming up and he wants to be able to afford a nice leather-bound sketchbook portfolio thing like all the real art students have. Stevie would tell him it was a waste of money, that he should save it instead and put it back for the day he moves out of his parents' place. (Having him and his Pa under the same roof after Bucky made it clear he was never coming to work in the garage is a recipe for disaster, and none of them can take much more of it. It's past time for him to be out on his own.)
It being a Friday night, and Bucky having gotten paid, he pulls aside the money to help with the rent, food for the week, and Stevie's present before putting the rest in his pockets and showing up on Stevie's Ma's doorstep. They go out to celebrate the end of another long, hard week.
It isn't something that Stevie enjoys that much, he knows, but she does it for him. He always has more fun when she comes along, so they end up at a cheap bar that Bucky knows. The proprietor is so excited by the end of Prohibition that he couldn't care less about a legal drinking age. There's a three-person band in the corner, and the crowd is mostly young people out to have a good time, no matter how shitty the rest of the world is.
Bucky loves it.
He's somewhere between his fourth and fifth beers, and his ninth or tenth dance partner, when he notices that he hasn't seen Stevie in a while. She likes to sit in a quiet corner and sketch faces from the crowd, usually. Bucky leaves her to it, only going over to keep her company every once in a while. She swears she likes it that way, that she enjoys watching him have fun, so he does. He keeps an eye on her, though, and she's been gone from her table for a while now.
Bucky isn't one to jump to conclusions. She might have gone to the ladies' room. She might have stepped outside for some fresh air, if the cigarette smoke is bothering her asthma. (She usually comes to get him when that happens, though, just in case it blows up into a full attack and she needs someone to calm her down.) She might have found a dance partner, unlikely as that seems after all the times she's turned Bucky down.
He gives it five minutes and one more dance, but when she still isn't back in her seat—or anywhere else in the bar that he can see—Bucky tosses back the last of his current beer and excuses himself from his latest partner with an apologetic kiss. He knows right where to start looking.
Bucky thinks sometimes that he either learned or was lucky enough to be born with a sixth sense about Stevie and trouble. He must have pulled her out of a hundred fights over the years, and he always seems to show up at just the right moment. It has to be after Stevie's got in a few good licks, so that she doesn't feel like he's trying to fight her battles for her, but before she gets really hurt. This is one area in which her being so small and a girl comes in handy; people tend to underestimate her, or pull their punches.
This time, he's just a minute or two late.
When Bucky goes out the back door, he sweeps his eyes around the dark, narrow back-street. In a corner, up against a brick retaining wall, there's a well-built guy maybe a couple years older than Bucky and a little well-dressed for a place like this. His hair is slicked back, he's got on a suit jacket, and his shoes are shiny in the moonlight. He smells like whiskey and aftershave and smoke from the bar. He's speaking, but it's too quiet for Bucky to hear him from behind.
Bucky has to take another step closer before he realizes that the man has Stevie pinned against the wall. One hand is in her long hair, pulling her head back to bare her throat, and the other has a tight grip on both her thin wrists. There's nothing she can do in that position, held down by somebody much taller and stronger and heavier, trapping her against the wall. She's struggling as much as she can, but she can't get any leverage and she isn't strong enough to break free.
"Hey!" Bucky yells.
The man doesn't so much as flinch, but Stevie's eyes dart away from the man's face and over to where Bucky is standing. She looks furious, which is to be expected, and scared, which isn't. Stevie Rogers isn't afraid of anything.
Bucky's pulling the guy back and throwing a punch before he even realizes that he's moved.
The man takes it on the side of the jaw and lets go of Stevie's wrists to steady himself against the wall. Stevie immediately twists and jabs her elbow into his stomach, making him curse. He shoves at her, and Stevie crashes into the brick wall shoulder-first, hard enough to bounce back off. Bucky catches her and steadies her on her feet by his side.
The man straightens up from where Stevie's blow had doubled him over, one hand on his ribs where her elbow connected. "Damn," he spits, looking at Bucky. "She yours? Because you really ought to teach your little bitch some better manners."
Bucky feels his blood heating up, but he waits for half a breath. Stevie usually likes to handle these sorts of things herself, and she doesn't need Bucky stepping in unless she's outmatched in a physical fight. If he tried to defend her honor with her standing right here, she'd probably smack him.
When she doesn't say anything, though, Bucky glances over just long enough to see that her breathing is labored. She's got one hand on the wall and the other pressed to her chest, and there's a slight wheezing sound coming from the back of her throat. Whatever she got into with this guy, it's triggered a mild asthma attack. It's not serious, nothing Bucky needs to drop everything and worry over, but she nods at him as if to say It's all right; you take this one.
So Bucky turns his attention back to the man. "She isn't mine, you asshole," Bucky says, voice clipped and cold. "She's not a thing. She can't belong to somebody."
The man snorts. "Well no wonder she's got such a high opinion of herself, if you let her think like that."
Bucky almost wants to laugh. As if he's ever let Stevie Rogers do a single thing in his life. He argues against some of her dumber ideas, of course, but that's never once stopped her. He always ends up diving in right after her anyway.
"I think you should go," Bucky says instead, in his best dangerous tone.
"I don't think so, boy," the man says. "She followed me out here, told me what I could and couldn't do to my own date, and then had the nerve to run off my girl." His face distorts into a weird mix of a leer and a glare. "I think she owes me one for that. Only fair."
Bucky feels something cold slip down his spine at those words. He looks at Stevie again, and this time he puts together little details that he ignored before. Her blouse is torn at the neck, sitting half-off one bony shoulder. She doesn't wear lipstick, but her mouth is too red, and there's a hint of blood at the corner of one lip. Her skirts are rumpled from being pressed into the wall, but they're also loose and sitting crooked on her hips.
Stevie is still having trouble breathing evenly, but she's quick to shake her head at him and say, "I—I'm fine." She straightens her clothing, a little self-consciously. "He didn't—You interrupted him. I'm fine."
There's a sick look on Stevie's face, though, and Bucky tenses all over. "Stevie ..."
Her face goes about three kinds of stubborn, all at once. "He was hurting his date, Buck," she says quietly. "I had to do something."
"Interfering little bitch," the man says. "You ought to make that up to me, don't you think?" He has the nerve to smile at Bucky. "You help me keep her quiet and I'll return the favor."
Bucky sees red. He's not aware that he's tackled the piece of shit until he's already got him pinned on the pavement, both hands around the guy's throat.
It's Stevie that stops him, with a hand on his shoulder. "No, Buck," she says. "He isn't worth it."
Bucky doesn't move at first, sitting on the guy's hips and holding him down through his thrashing. "And the next girl he corners?" he demands. "You won't be there to stop him next time, Stevie."
Her hand tightens on his shoulder. "You'd go to jail, Buck."
Bucky curses and lets go of the guy's throat. The creep starts coughing, struggling to breathe normally.
"What the hell?" the man demands, hoarse. "You're crazy! You could have killed me, and for what? One broad who ain't even pretty enough to bother—"
Bucky punches him again, just to shut him up. (If Stevie wants to smack him for it, he doesn't much care.)
Stevie watches from off to the side, looking thoughtful. "Can you knock him out?" she asks.
Bucky picks the guy off the pavement by the shoulders and then slams his head back down on the street, maybe a little harder than is strictly necessary. His eyes roll up and he goes limp.
Stevie pulls Bucky to his feet—or rather, holds onto him while he stands up, because she weighs about half what he does—and gives him a little push away from the creep on the ground. Once he's clear, she steps between the man's splayed legs. She pauses, considering, and then deliberately brings one foot down solidly on the man's crotch.
Bucky grins.
"Let's go," Stevie says, brushing off her hands.
Bucky hesitates. "We should tell the cops," he says. "Report him."
"For what?" Stevie asks. It sounds so world-weary that it makes his chest hurt. "He'd probably have you arrested for assaulting him."
The terrible thing is that Bucky can't really argue with her. "But ..."
Stevie steps up to him and briefly touches her forehead to his. (She's too short to reach, even on her tiptoes, but Bucky realizes what she's doing and meets her halfway, like always.)
"Walk me home, Buck," she says quietly. "Please."
So he puts an arm over her shoulder, and does.
/~*~/
It takes two days for Stark to finalize the new Captain America uniform, which works out because it takes that long for the newly christened Strategic Scientific Reserve Special Operations Division Advance Team One—already colloquially abbreviated to 'the SSR Commandos,' thank goodness—to recover from their celebratory night out and show up for training.
They're waiting outside Stark's ready room when Stevie comes out, and the team sees their C.O. in full costume for the first time. It's as gaudy as the stage version, but it looks sturdier at least, made from leather and tough canvas instead of flimsy cloth. The color scheme is just barely muted, a token nod to camouflage in the field. They've added a utility belt and a hip holster, and there's a magnetic latch between her shoulder blades for the shield.
Stevie walks up to them, smiling. "So?" she asks. She reaches over one shoulder and pulls the shield free, hefting it on one arm. "What do you think?"
Bucky realizes that he's staring at the shield and makes himself blink. "You painted it like a target," he says.
The shield isn't plain silver anymore, but three concentric rings of red-white-red, with a white star on a blue circle in the middle.
Stevie seems a little sheepish. "Do you like it?"
She's technically addressing the whole team, but she's looking right at Bucky when she says it, so they let him answer.
Bucky is still staring. He can't seem to stop. "You painted it like a goddamn target, Steve," he says again.
Next to him, Morita stifles a laugh. "Well, at least it matches," he says.
Stevie, meanwhile, is rolling her eyes. "It is a target, Buck," she says, very patiently. "They're supposed to shoot at the shield. That's what it's for."
Dernier calls out a string of rapid, fluid French, which Jones helpfully translates as Does it actually stop bullets?
Stevie settles it on her arm and nods at Bucky.
Bucky sighs. He pulls out his sidearm, and in one smooth motion lifts it to aim at Stevie's center of mass. He doesn't give a warning or pause to see if she's ready; he just fires.
The Commandos curse and leap backward.
Stevie angles the shield slightly to take the shot, catching it just right to make the bullet impact and drop harmlessly to the grass at her feet instead of ricocheting off.
"See?" she says, grinning.
Jones is the first to step forward. He crouches down and picks up the bullet, which is now just a misshapen lump of metal, and rolls it between his fingers. "Okay," he admits. "That's pretty impressive."
Bucky just snaps his pistol back into its holster. (After two days at the base's range, shooting at Stevie is old news.) "How's the paint job hold up under fire?"
Stevie flips the shield around in her arms, rubbing one gloved hand lovingly over the curved surface. "A little scuffed, maybe," she admits. "I'll have to touch it up between missions."
"Of course you will," Bucky says, long-suffering, and the entire team laughs.
The next several days are spent running training exercises. Nothing particularly taxing, just designed to get the six of them—seven, counting Stevie—used to working as a team. Bucky watches most of it from a sniper's perch, spotting for them, keeping an eye on how they move and work together.
Stevie is a natural.
She's always had a good eye for people (except for when it comes to Bucky, maybe). She's got a knack for figuring them out, knowing what to say and how to act to get them to cooperate. She's an instinctual peacemaker, when she isn't deliberately picking a fight, and the orders come easy for her. She sees how they fit together, and seems to understand everyone's strengths and weaknesses.
Dugan, for instance, does subtle about as well as Stevie herself in her gaudy costume. He quickly becomes their second point-man, but he's also good at handling heavy weapons and machinery. Dernier spent some time with the French Resistance, so he can improvise an explosive out of a typical farmhouse pantry, and is fantastic at pulling off to-the-minute diversions. Jones has quiet feet through rough terrain, and a sharp eye for details; he rapidly becomes their primary scout. Falsworth is calm and steady, dependable as they come, and can provide accurate covering fire under the most chaotic circumstances. Morita can keep the radio working when half the circuits are blown all to hell, or get a truck moving with a couple bullets in the engine block, and he's also a sneaky bastard and a crack shot in close quarters.
It takes Stevie almost no time at all to figure each of them out, and to have them responding to her orders like they've done this for years. Bucky watches, silent, looking through a scope as a mix of Allied troops from all over—an English aristocrat, a Frenchman, a bloody-knuckled Boston brawler, a Japanese-American fresh out of the Stateside internment camps, and a Negro who legally isn't supposed to be in a white unit at all—work together and follow an Irish punk from Brooklyn.
Only Stevie, Bucky thinks. He has the crazy idea that they might not even care, if they find out she's not really a man.
By the time the camera crews and newspaper reporters show up a week later, Captain America's Commandos are a tight, functioning unit. If anybody came with questions about the fact that the team includes two foreign nationals in addition to two non-white Americans, they're silenced. When it comes time to take some photographs and shoot a few film reels, nobody suggests hiding Jones or Morita in the back, or editing out Dernier's French or Falsworth's British accent.
"If they're good enough for Captain America," one reporter says, shaking Stevie's hand enthusiastically, "they're good enough for the American public."
Bucky half-expects Stevie to argue with the man, to go off on a rant about how what a man looks like or where he's born has nothing to do with his ability to be a hero—not to mention the little fact that people who look like Jones and people who look like Morita make up a large percentage of 'the American public'—but he's underestimated Stevie's stage training. He sometimes forgets that she spent six months on a publicity circuit, learning how to curb her temper and play the game.
She shakes the man's hand instead, face caught somewhere between a solemn look and a movie-star smile, and says, "They're the best. I intend to prove that to Adolf Hitler myself."
The reporter hastily writes that down, and they later find out that it was the headline back in New York the next day: Captain America and His Commandos Take the Fight to Hitler! They laugh about it back in London, teasing Stevie about her over-the-top public persona.
Stevie shrugs, unselfconscious. "You should have seen the dialogue they had me doing on stage," she says. "It's what the press wants to hear. You guys should learn how to talk to them, actually. They'll start coming after you, next."
She's right, of course. By the time Colonel Phillips clears them for field duty, half of America and a good portion of the Allied Armed Forces knows their names. They get recognized almost everywhere they go, especially if Stevie is with them in her iconic outfit. They're heroes, and they haven't even been on a mission yet.
Bucky watches it all, wondering if it's enough to bring them home alive.
/~*~/
Bucky is eighteen years old the winter that Stevie's Ma dies.
It's been a constant worry for Stevie, and therefore for Bucky, since they've been old enough to realize what her Ma's job in the TB ward meant for her life expectancy. She probably contracted the disease years ago, but once it turns active it gets vicious. She goes from it's just a cold to coughing up blood in a handkerchief in under a week.
Bucky is terrified the entire time. Part of it is that Sarah Rogers has raised him as much as his own Ma, it seems like. (He can't imagine how much worse it is for Stevie.) Most of it, though, is the prospect of Stevie catching it, too. With her weak immune system, and her Ma carrying it for who knows how long, what are her chances? Rheumatic fever after a bad sore throat almost killed her last year, and it left her with a heart murmur that could take her at any time. What chance does she have against something like tuberculosis?
The whole ordeal is like something out of a nightmare. Every second that Bucky doesn't spend at his job, he spends at the Rogers apartment instead of his own. He fetches water, washes dishes, changes bedding, and does everything he can to keep Stevie away from her Ma when she's coughing. (Sarah seems to catch on to what he's doing, and helps him.) He runs their errands for them, and if he puts some of his own money into their groceries, well, Stevie is a little distracted and won't ever notice.
When Stevie is frustrated and angry, it's Bucky she yells at until she's screamed herself out. When she's exhausted, it's Bucky who tucks a blanket around her on the couch. When she's lost, it's Bucky who holds her and lets her cry on his shoulder. It's Bucky who greets the neighbors at the door when they come to offer their support. It's Bucky who goes to the pharmacy to argue with the doctor, again. It's Bucky who goes to fetch the local parish priest, when it can't be put off any longer.
The last night, the longest night, Stevie refuses to leave her mother's bedside. Bucky takes all the blankets from Stevie's room and makes a pallet on the floor by the wall, instead. He lies down on his back and pulls Stevie into his arms, helpless to do anything to make it better, but trying anyway. He hugs her tight and rubs her back and ignores the way her elbows and knees are jabbing him or the way the arm she's lying on starts to fall asleep. He'd stay right there forever, if that's what she needed.
Sometime after midnight, Stevie rolls over and shifts until she can press her forehead to his, looking for the comfort to be found in a familiar gesture. At such close range, even in the dark, he can see the unshed tears in her eyes. For the first time in all the years he's known her, she says, "I'm scared, Buck."
Bucky doesn't know what to do, so he just says, "Me, too."
When dawn arrives, Sarah Rogers is gone.
Bucky doesn't want to leave her, but Stevie asks for some time alone.
Bucky doesn't go home; he heads straight for his parents' apartment for the first time since he told them Stevie's Ma was sick, which feels like forever ago. He catches them just before his Pa goes to work, and tells them the bad news.
His Ma pulls him into an embrace, and Bucky breaks down in a way he couldn't, before. He was too focused on Stevie to feel much of anything himself.
"It's not fair," Bucky says, arms locked tight around his mother, standing adrift in the middle of the kitchen with breakfast going cold on the counter behind them, utterly forgotten. He appreciates her so much more today than ever before. "Stevie's the best person I know; she doesn't deserve this."
"Nobody does, honey," Bucky's Ma tells him.
"What do I do?" Bucky whispers.
"What you've been doing," Bucky's Ma says. "Be there. She's going to need you."
For a while, though, Stevie keeps her distance. It's almost like she doesn't even want Bucky around. She's extremely busy, but every time Bucky tries to help—to stand in line for the death certificate, to write thank-you notes for all the well-wishers, even just to bring her some groceries or do the laundry—Stevie tells him no. She's determined to do it all by herself. She won't even let him sleep on her couch, or come sleep on his, to keep from being alone.
Bucky doesn't get a chance to give her a hug at the funeral, because she slips out to walk to the cemetery as soon as the service ends. At the grave-site, she's all calm stoicism and straight back as she thanks each person for coming. When Bucky and his folks come through the line, she greets them with handshakes, like they're acquaintances instead of practically family.
Bucky drops her hand and leans forward, determined to hug her this time. He's shocked when she puts her palms flat on his chest and pushes him away. (She's not really strong enough to budge him, but Bucky moves anyway.)
"Stevie?" he asks, frowning.
"Don't." Stevie says. Her voice comes out strangled. "Just—don't, Buck. Please."
"Why?" he asks.
"I'll cry," Stevie whispers.
"So?"
She shakes her head. "I can't. Not—" She swallows. "Let me get through this."
Bucky hesitates, but his Ma takes his hand and squeezes it, pulling him toward their car.
When he finds Stevie later, on the landing outside her Ma's apartment—her apartment, now—Bucky tries to convince her to at least stay a few days with his folks, if not with him. She's the only one who thinks she should have to do this alone. She's going to fall apart sooner or later, and Bucky wants to be there when it happens. Lord knows Stevie would do it for him, if it had been his Ma. Bucky and Stevie, always. (He says the words to her, even though he shouldn't have to, but it's like she's forgotten somehow.)
She smiles. He pretends not to notice her tears. She doesn't come home with him.
A week goes by, and they exchange only passing pleasantries. It's like they've suddenly become casual friends, instead of spending most of their free time together. Bucky's Ma tells him to be patient, that she'll come around. She's just adjusting, and he needs to give her some space.
A second week goes by. Then a third. Christmas comes and goes, and even though she spends the day with him and his folks (because where else could she go?), it isn't the same. She's distant, quiet. She goes weeks without getting into a single fight, and even though Bucky's been begging her to stop sticking her nose in things for almost as long as he's known her, now it scares him. It's like that fire that he loves about her is going out, and he doesn't know how to bring it back.
It ends up being three months before Stevie shows up at his apartment one evening, shivering on the porch when he gets home from work. Bucky comes up the stairs and there she is, bundled up in her best coat—which is still too thin, too big, and patched within an inch of its life—and looking miserable in the February chill.
"You idiot," Bucky says, hustling her through the door. "I gave you my spare key for a reason, Stevie. How long were you out there?"
Stevie ignores the question, moving stiffly over to his couch and sitting awkwardly in the center. She doesn't take her coat off, although that might be because she's shivering. She curls up into a small space, even for her, arms around her bony knees.
"Are you all right?" Bucky asks, kneeling in front of her. "Talk to me."
Stevie won't meet his eyes, but she does speak, if almost too quietly to hear. "I'm going to lose the apartment."
Bucky rocks back on his heels. "Is Mr. Mallory—"
"No," Stevie says quickly. "He's been very understanding, actually. I just can't earn enough to make the rent, and Ma's savings are almost gone." She's trembling all over. "I'm already two weeks behind, and he says I can have another two weeks to figure something out, but I—I have to leave, after that."
"Stevie, I'm sorry," Bucky says. He sits down on the couch beside her and puts an arm over her shoulders, tugging her close to his side.
For a brief second, she tenses, and Bucky is afraid that she's going to pull away and insist that she doesn't need him mollycoddling her. Instead, she turns just slightly into his arms and buries her face in his chest. Her light trembling becomes full-body sobbing, quietened only because she'll have an asthma attack if she cries too hard.
It's not like Bucky didn't see this coming, but it still hits him like a blow to the gut. Stevie's doing the best she can, but she's too frail to hold down a textile or laundry job for long. She can't be a nurse like her Ma, because she'd end up catching everything and would be dead inside of a year. She doesn't have the money to go to a women's college and get qualified to be a clerk or a librarian or a teacher. She's not suited to most domestic work—her stitching is actually worse than her cooking, and there's a reason Bucky makes dinner if they eat together—and even if she was, where would she find a rich family to work for that didn't already have a housekeeper or a nanny?
If the Depression was over, maybe she could have worked at the front counter of a local shop, but everybody is still struggling, and very few people are hiring at all. Sickly little Stephanie Rogers, with her asthma and propensity to pick fights and speak her mind (even to customers), isn't at the top of anybody's list. She can't even rely on the relief programs, such as they are, because soup kitchens and bread lines aside, everything is designed for unemployed men. Bucky's seen a woman looking for factory work get accused of stealing a job from a man who needs it to support his family, and never mind that maybe she was there in the first place because her husband got fired, or maybe she never had a man to support her in the first place.
"What are you going to do?" Bucky asks her, once she's calm again.
Stevie wipes at her eyes and sits up straight, squaring her shoulders defiantly. "I want to work for the newspaper," she says, like an announcement. "I can draw advertisements, or the funny pages. It's the only thing I'm actually good at."
"That would be perfect for you," Bucky admits. It solves almost all the problems Stevie has with regular work: no physical labor or anything to set off her asthma, and she could even get some work done if she was stuck sick in bed, as long as she has some decent light. Bucky's never heard of a woman drawing for the papers, though.
"I've done some research," Stevie goes on. "It'd be barely enough to live on, maybe, but I could do it. Especially if I had a roommate, to split rent."
Bucky blinks. "You're looking for a roommate?"
Stevie stares at him. Slowly, she raises her eyebrows.
Bucky sits bolt upright. "You mean me? You want us to live together?"
Stevie starts to get the faintest blush across her cheeks, but she crosses her arms and holds her ground. "You tried to get me to stay with you right after my Ma died."
Bucky closes his mouth with a sharp click of his teeth. He'd only meant for a day or two, maybe a week, until she got through the worst of the grief. That's all right, the sort of thing best friends do for each other. It'd be a little scandalous, but people would understand. The neighborhood has long since gotten used to their strange friendship, the one that didn't end when everybody around them split friends along gender lines.
Living together, more or less permanently, is something entirely different.
"We're not getting married," Bucky blurts out.
Stevie rolls her eyes. "Don't worry. I wasn't asking."
"No, I mean—" Bucky feels like the world is spinning a little faster all of a sudden. "What would people think, you and me living together without being married?"
"Well," Stevie says. "I had an idea about that."
Bucky should have known it was trouble, just from the look on her face.
"Can I borrow some of your old clothes?" Stevie asks. "I'm pretty sure I can take them in to fit me. And I'm going to need some sharp scissors, for my hair."
Two weeks later, Bucky packs up his current apartment and he and Stevie move into a new part of the neighborhood where nobody's met them before. Together, they go around and introduce themselves: James Barnes, and his best friend (and roommate) Steven Rogers.
/~*~/
Stevie shows up in the mess hall just as Bucky's finishing up his dinner. (He's not exactly sure what it is, but it's hot and filling and he's just over a month out of a prison camp, so he isn't complaining.)
The hall isn't crowded, because it's later than the usual evening rush, but there are enough people present that it's immediately noticeable when the conversations all start to peter out around him. He looks up to see what the interruption is, and finds Stevie at the doorway.
If she's uncomfortable with the whole room staring at her, she doesn't show it. At least she's wearing a normal Army uniform, not her red-white-and-blue monstrosity, so the gawking is simply based on a captain entering the enlisted men's mess. (Some of the men probably recognize her even without the costume, but they're too tactful to make a fuss over it.)
"As you were," Stevie says to the room at large, with a casual little wave.
Nobody says anything for a moment. Mess halls are sacred ground, and an officer appearing doesn't require the room to snap to attention, but at least half of the conversations that Bucky can hear (and when did his hearing get good enough to eavesdrop from three tables away?) aren't the sort to continue in the presence of an officer. Especially if said officer is Captain America.
"Sergeant Barnes?" Stevie asks, breaking the silence.
Bucky gets to his feet and falls into a casual parade-rest. "Captain?"
"I'd like a word," Stevie tells him. "Report to my office when you're finished here."
Bucky's pretty sure she doesn't actually have an office, because they've been having their daily reviews of the team's progress in her quarters instead. Maybe she just doesn't want to order him to report to her room this late at night in front of a room full of listening ears.
"Yes, sir," Bucky says smartly. "Half an hour, sir?"
"That'll be fine, Sergeant," Stevie says. Her eyes flick around the room again, where most of the men are still staring at her. "Carry on," she adds, a little dryly.
She turns around and walks out, and slowly the bustle of conversation picks up again.
It ends up being less than half an hour before Bucky reports, partially because he was basically finished already and doesn't need to dawdle in the mess when he's eating by himself, and partially because he's curious about what Stevie wants to discuss. As her second-in-command, he was present at the briefing earlier when Colonel Phillips told them that they'd be getting their first assignment tomorrow morning; he wonders if she's gotten some new information about their objectives that she wants to go over with him before telling the rest of the team.
They're finally going on a mission. This time tomorrow, they'll be out in the field.
Bucky slips into the officers' barracks building unnoticed, biding his time outside with a cigarette until there's a gap in people coming and going. He heads straight up to Stevie's room and doesn't bother knocking before opening the door and sliding in.
Whether it's because of her rank or because Colonel Phillips knows she has a secret to protect, Stevie's room is tiny but private. There's just barely room for a bed, a trunk to store her possessions, and a miniscule desk for paperwork. With two fully-grown people inside, it's a little cramped.
"Office?" Bucky asks as he shuts the door behind him, smirking. "Really?"
Stevie is sitting in the wooden chair, but she puts down the paper she was reading to look at him. "I have a desk," she points out.
Bucky shakes his head and walks over to the bed. He flops down onto the mattress, face up, and laces his fingers behind his head. (The bed is nice, more comfortable than a standard-issue cot.)
"What did you need?" Bucky asks, staring at the ceiling.
When he doesn't get an answer, he props his upper body on his elbows so that he can look at her. She's chewing on her bottom lip, which is never a good sign.
"Stevie?" Bucky asks.
She takes a deep breath. "I want to tell them."
Bucky waits for an explanation, but there doesn't seem to be one coming. "What?" he prompts.
"The Commandos," Stevie clarifies. "I don't like lying to them. I couldn't help it, here, but we're going out into the field tomorrow." She rubs at one elbow with her other hand, a little guiltily. "It doesn't feel right, keeping secrets from them. We're supposed to be a team."
Bucky sits upright. "I thought you signed a bunch of papers saying you couldn't tell anyone," he points out.
"I did."
Bucky's eyebrows go up. "You going to break your oath to the US Army, Captain Rogers?"
Stevie just looks at him, a little sheepish.
Bucky closes his eyes. "Christ," he mutters. "You want me to tell them."
"You never signed anything," Stevie reminds him. "Sooner or later somebody's going to rectify that, but in the meantime you could theoretically tell anybody you pleased."
"That's kind of a fine line, isn't it?"
Stevie gets up just long enough to spin the chair around and straddle it, resting her hands on the back. "Those papers didn't say anything about me talking to people who already know," she insists. "If my team just happened to find out somehow, well. I certainly couldn't be blamed for explaining in an attempt to preserve team solidarity."
Bucky snorts. "Didn't take you long to pick up the brass jargon, huh?"
Stevie gives him an exasperated look.
Bucky sighs. "I just don't think it's a good idea," he says.
Her face falls. "You don't think they'd follow me, if they knew."
"After you rescued them? They'd follow Captain America no matter who he was," Bucky says flatly.
"So why not tell them?" Stevie asks.
"I'm used to thinking of you as a fella in front of other people," Bucky says patiently. "Can you be sure the others will be able to pull that off? That they'll tell bawdy jokes in front of you, or curse, or be comfortable stripped to bare chests and skivvies in the summer?"
Stevie thinks for a minute, not speaking.
Bucky nods. "What happens then, when somebody gets curious about why Captain America's Commandos are treating him like he has delicate, ladylike sensibilities?"
"Maybe Captain America is just a stickler for discipline," Stevie offers.
Bucky doesn't mention that it bothers him, sometimes, how she's started to refer to herself in third person. Between separating 'Steve' and 'Stephanie,' and now adding a stage persona, Stevie's head must be getting crowded.
"This is really important to you, isn't it?" he asks her quietly.
"Yeah," she says. "It is."
Bucky kicks his knees absently open and shut where they hang off the mattress. "Can I ask why?"
"You mean, other than I don't want to lie to my men?" she asks. (Isn't that something, how easy the words my men fall off Stevie's lips, like she was always meant to do this.) "If I tell them voluntarily—"
Bucky manages to interrupt her with nothing more than a sideways look.
"If you tell them, because I asked you to," Stevie corrects, "then it's a sign of trust. Something to bring us closer together, as a team."
"You think it might make them feel special, privileged," Bucky muses. (He always could tell what she was thinking, most of the time.) "Give them something to protect."
Stevie nods. "But if they find out on their own? Maybe I slip up. Maybe something we can't control happens." She's shaking her head. "Then it's a betrayal. They'll never trust me again. The whole team would fall apart, and I'll be back doing my dancing monkey routine so fast it'll make me dizzy."
Bucky doesn't like it, but he can't really argue the logic. He's already spent a considerable amount of time worrying about the logistics of keeping her secret on an extended mission with such a small team. It's entirely possible that they'll find out, sooner rather than later. It's a risk either way, but she's right about the consequences being worse if they get caught instead of coming clean from the start.
"Damn," Bucky says. He puts his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. "How do I even start that conversation?"
They discuss it for hours, going through likely scenarios and possible reactions. (At one point, Stevie throws her hands up and says I don't know, Buck; maybe you should just call me Stephanie in front of them and pretend like you didn't know it was a secret.) They go around and around in circles, because there just isn't a clean way to deliver a shock like that.
By the time they finally call it quits—Jesus Christ, I'll make it up as I go, Stevie; that always works out better for me anyhow—it's well after midnight, and they have an 0700 briefing to attend in the morning.
Bucky gets to his feet and walks to the door, but he hesitates before reaching for the knob. It's late, too late for him to be here. If somebody saw him leaving, it would look strange, even for a normal captain and his sergeant. If somebody like Colonel Phillips, who knows the truth, sees him? Bucky can already imagine the lecture, about keeping up appearances if nothing else.
Stevie must figure out what's got him stuck, because she sighs behind him and says, "Just sleep here. You're not going to get yelled at less now than you will in the morning, and this way you'll at least get some sleep first."
"I don't know," Bucky says, still hesitating. "I think the lecture might be worse if I stay the night."
Stevie shrugs. "The door locks, you know," she tells him quietly. "Colonel Phillips insisted on it, as a precaution."
Bucky's too tired to argue about it. He turns away from the door and shrugs out of his uniform jacket. "I'm blaming you, if I get caught," he says, as he throws the jacket on the back of Stevie's desk chair and kicks his way out of his boots. "A whole mess hall full of people heard you ordering me to report."
Stevie rolls her eyes as she leans against the wall to untie her laces. "I said 'office' for a reason."
Bucky slips off his tie and yanks off his socks; they join his jacket on the chair. "Anybody in a position to yell at me is going to know you don't have an office."
"I should have an office, though, right?" Stevie asks. She sets her boots by the end of the bed, places her socks carefully on top, and begins unbuttoning her jacket. "Captain America should get an office."
"It's a national tragedy," Bucky agrees. Without thinking, he pulls off his shirt and throws it back to the chair with the rest of his things. "I mean, how else—"
"Bucky!"
Bucky turns around, cursing himself for an idiot. He hastily crosses his arms over his bare chest, as if that's going to hide more than a small fraction of the scars. Somehow, he'd forgotten that Stevie hasn't seen him without a shirt since she rescued him.
Stevie has crossed the small room and is now right in front of him, something horrified in her blue eyes. "Jesus, Buck," she whispers.
Bucky steps back, almost hitting the wall. "It's nothing," he says quickly.
"It is not nothing," Stevie insists. "Bucky, these are—these are burns."
"Some of them, yeah," Bucky says. His tone is aiming for flippant, but it doesn't quite make it. "Some are cuts; they took tissue samples with a scalpel. Needle marks have all faded, I think." He shifts his weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable. "The others are ... well, I don't really remember everything they did, to be honest."
"Bucky," Stevie says again, mournfully. He can see tears hovering at the corners of her eyes, unshed. She reaches out a hand, like she's going to touch him.
"Don't—it's fine," Bucky says. "I'm fine. I am." He pushes her hand away; she shouldn't have to touch something so ugly. "Don't worry about me."
"I knew you weren't sleeping well," Stevie admits. "I had no idea it was this bad, though. This isn't—Buck, this isn't just a few experiments." Her bottom lip is trembling. "This is torture."
Bucky flinches. He hates that word. It carries so many connotations, and he can't deal with anyone's pity (especially not Stevie's). What right does he have to be upset, when so many guys didn't make it out? Everybody else on Zola's table died in a day or two, but Bucky held on. Stevie came for him and got him out alive. He survived. He won.
"I'm fine, Stevie," Bucky tries again. He ignores the way his voice is trembling. "Here, just give me my shirt back—"
He tries to get past her, but Stevie stops him. Her arms might as well be steel for all Bucky can move them.
"Don't you dare," Stevie says, quiet and intense. Her hands reach out slowly and begin to roam across his skin, moving from mark to mark across his chest, his ribcage, his sides, his back. "Don't hide from me, Buck."
Bucky's mouth twists into a nightmarish mockery of his trademark smirk. "You don't want to see me like this," he tells her.
"I need to," Stevie whispers. "Please."
Bucky swallows one time, gathering his courage. Then he steps back, just to arm's reach, and spreads his hands out. He has to close his eyes—he can't watch her face, can't see that moment when pity turns to disgust—but he stands there, exposed, more vulnerable than he's been in a long, long time. He lets her look, lets her see him.
With his eyes closed, it's a shock when he feels her lips press gently into a mark on his shoulder, brushing a feather-light kiss over the damaged skin. He gasps and jerks backwards.
"Oh, God, does it hurt?" Stevie asks, sounding alarmed. "I'm sorry!"
"No," Bucky says. Now more than his voice is trembling. "I just—You startled me."
Her hands slip around him, arms underneath his outstretched ones. Broad palms, so much bigger than he remembers, settle on the backs of his shoulder blades, supporting him. "Is this okay?" she asks.
Bucky leans back a little, but her hands don't budge. She's strong enough to hold him up, to hold him still. He nods once, a quick jerk of his head, eyes still tightly shut.
This time, when he feels the light touch of her kiss against a different scar near the top of his chest, he can't pull away. He's caught between her strong hands and the gentle press of her lips. Maybe it ought to make him feel trapped, but it doesn't. She's got him; she can hold him together. He's safe.
He starts to shiver.
Stevie stops immediately, but she doesn't take her hands away. "Bucky?" she asks.
"You shouldn't have to see me like this," Bucky tells her. He has to clench his hands into fists, to stop himself from reaching out and pulling her closer. "I'm damaged goods, Stevie."
There's silence between them for a moment, until she kisses yet another scar. This one is closer to his side, at his ribcage. When her lips pull back, she says, "I hate these, because they caused you pain. If I could have stopped it from happening to you, I would have done anything. Anything, Bucky."
He squeezes his eyes more tightly shut. He is not going to start crying. He's not a child.
"It's not your fault, Stevie," he says. "There wasn't anything you could have done."
She ignores him, like he hadn't spoken at all. "But when I see them like this, all these marks that you carry with you ..."
She slides her hands down from his shoulders to the small of his back, never letting up the pressure that's holding him upright. She must crouch, because her next kiss is pressed to the jagged scar over his kidney.
"They're beautiful, Buck," she breathes, letting the words cascade across his skin. "They're proof that you fought, that you stayed alive when so many others didn't. They show the world just how strong you really are."
Bucky opens his eyes, then.
Stevie is on her knees at his feet, arms around his waist, tears on her cheeks and something fierce and achingly beautiful shining out of her eyes. She looks like she's praying, face uplifted, only it's Bucky that she's worshiping, as broken as he is. It shakes him right down to his core.
"I'm so sorry," Stevie adds. "I came for you as soon as I could."
"I know," Bucky says. He reaches down and cups her face in his hands, thumbs passing through the tear tracks on her cheeks. "You saved me, Stevie."
He pulls gently upward. She stands up immediately, in one fluid motion. His hands never leave her face, and her hands stay pressed tightly to his back, holding them together.
"It's not your fault," Bucky repeats, and brings her head down just enough to press his forehead to hers, the way they've always done when things are bad. Shutting out the world, focusing on each other, because that's all they need. "You saved me."
"I'll always save you," Stevie promises him, arms tightening around him, like she might never let him go.
"I know," Bucky says again. "Because I'll always save you, too."
"Bucky and Stevie," she says, smiling even though there are still tears in her eyes.
"Bucky and Stevie," Bucky repeats, smiling back. "Always."
They eventually let go of each other in order to finish the routines of getting ready for bed, but as soon as the lights are off and they're under the covers, they reach for each other again. In the darkness, Bucky's hands slowly learn her new body, the way she'd mapped out each of his scars. Without the uniform—and he was right; there's a compression shirt flattening out her chest, with padding to disguise some of her curves, apparently courtesy of Howard Stark—she's markedly feminine, soft and strong all at once. She's self-conscious about how much she's changed, though, in much the same way Bucky had been. She admits to being worried that he sees her differently, now that she's taller and so much stronger than him.
It doesn't matter, of course. They're both different from the way they were back in Brooklyn, but somehow they fit together just the same. (Even if Stevie got perfected while Bucky just got broken.)
"I'll always love you, Buck," Stevie whispers once, a reassurance in the darkness. "No matter what happens."
"You'll always be my girl, Stevie," Bucky whispers back. "Don't care what body you have."
They fall asleep that way, arms and legs tangled together, foreheads just barely touching.