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Carter stalked out of the command tent and over to where Bucky waited, leaned against a convenient jeep. She plucked the cigarette right out of his mouth and inhaled about half the thing in one breath.
"I don't know how you can go out on patrol with that man and not have a heart attack," she said.
He grinned, pulled another couple of ciggies from his pack, and handed her one after they were lit. Steve's ration - no need to be stingy. Steve wouldn't even notice they were gone for days.
"It's pretty much one long, nightmarish heart attack," he said, "every damn time."
"I have never met such a stubborn, reckless, foolhardy -"
"Since the last time you looked in the mirror?"
Carter glared at him, then gave him her best snob voice.
"I beg your pardon, I am never foolhardy."
"Yes ma'am, whatever you say ma'am."
He liked Carter, even if she was yet another symptom of the new Steve. Bucky always thought the original model was just fine, but there was no point in saying so. Steve was too damn happy. Finally on a stage big enough to suit his own idea of what it meant to "help." Every explosion and captured scientist put a self-satisfied smirk on that oversized face.
And when Carter was around? He shone like the sun.
"I'd be beside myself if you weren't out there with him, Barnes," Carter said, "heaven knows I don't trust him to watch his own back."
He liked Carter, but they weren't generally this nice to each other.
"Thanks."
"Thanks for the ciggie."
She pushed off from the jeep and ground the stub into the ground, patted her hair.
"Back to it, I suppose. All right?"
She stood in front of him as if for inspection. Bucky had been out with some gorgeous girls in his time, but he would never have had the guts to approach this one. She was all stubbornness and steel. No wonder Steve liked her. And was terrified of her in equal measure.
He reached out and tugged her collar straight.
"I guess you'll do, Agent Carter."
She rolled her eyes.
"I'm overcome with relief to hear it, Sergeant Barnes."
But she winked at him before she squared her shoulders and stomped back to command.
Swell girl. She almost deserved him. Assuming any of them would get out of this mess alive, which Bucky seriously doubted.
The breaks back in camp were pretty nice: actual tables to eat your meals, laundry, sometimes even hot water to sluice off the grime of a month in the woods of Europe. You could mostly count on the barracks mattresses not having any insects living in them. In a crowd, there was a little more space for privacy. He didn't have to be so careful about pretending to get drunk or to not be able to see in the dark.
The downside of that was time to think, and that never got Bucky anywhere. He had two general lines of thinking: (1) what the fuck was happening to his body and (2) what that hell had Steve been thinking. Neither line was either fruitful or enjoyable.
For the first, he hadn't turned bright red yet and wasn't planning on letting the docs lock him up in a rat cage until he did, so he was just gonna have to pretend his veins weren't full of fire and sneak as much food as he could charm out of the lucky schmoes whose Army service consisted of working the mess tent.
For the second - well, he'd already broken a knuckle on Steve's face two days after they got back from his glorious rescue mission. Steve had had a little red mark for a day, while Bucky's hand still ached when it was going to rain.
"How could I write, Bucky? I didn't think you'd understand."
That's for damn sure. The one thing Steve Rogers never needed to grow any more of was stubbornness, so there was no point in arguing. And maybe from some angles it was actually good to see Steve so healthy. As long as Bucky didn't think too hard about how he got that way, the reckless, thoughtless, crazy, no-longer-little dumbass.
But Bucky for damn sure wasn't gonna make things any easier on the guy. Steve was supposed to stay safe. He was supposed to stay home, he was supposed to be home, to give Bucky something to dream about instead of the sound of explosives and the stench of human guts.
Not standing in forests in an outfit so bright it was like a fucking beacon and dragging the bunch of them from danger to peril and back again, always with a smile on his big dumb face.
They shipped back out the next day, a thick roll of orders in Steve's belt.
"Nice lipstick," Dugan said as they left camp.
Steve turned bright red and scrubbed at his mouth.
"Lower," Dugan said.
Steve's head snapped back as he scrubbed his neck. Then he looked at his glove - entirely clean of lipstick - and glared.
Dugan whistled a little Irish tune.
In retrospect, that probably set the tone.
Woods, rain, sleeping on the ground with a rock in your kidney and a pinecone in your ear. The first mission was standard levels of terrible, including cages full of wrong-looking animals that they had to burn and guys with poison capsules in their teeth dying in foamy-mouthed droves. The Howlers came out of it all with their shoulders up around their ears. They put a day between themselves and the wreckage, and that's when they got into real trouble.
Maybe they deserved it. Definitely Bucky should've seen it coming, when Steve went quiet.
But they were all a little ramped up, and Steve was such an easy mark.
Bucky was sympathetic, on occasion: the rest of them had been greenhorns in groups. You rarely got just one hapless rube all by his lonesome. Steve also had the disadvantages of coming to them pre-loaded with a ridiculous story and that bright blue suit.
Sure, he had saved everyone's asses, pulled them out of the cannon fodder infantry lines for his special crazy-people scary mission unit, they were all very grateful, etc. But Steve at first had been beyond helpless in the woods. They just all got in the habit.
The Howlers' first mission, the guy couldn't even set up his tent. And he flat out refused to ask for help. About a hundred times Bucky set down his can of hash to stride over and say "goddammit, Steve, let me do it."
Then he'd think about Steve signing up the night before Bucky'd even shipped out. Or every damn mail call when they didn't call his name. And that grenade story Carter had told him. Forget it. Rogers could learn to pitch his own damn tent or sleep the hell outside.
When Rogers crawled in his tent at 0230 saying, "come on, Bucky, I'm freezing my nuts off out here," it was only for the sake of their two sainted mothers that Bucky shifted to one side. He got in a good dig with his elbow, too.
"Ow, dammit."
"Serves you right, moron. Next time you refuse to ask for help, maybe one of us'll get killed. Won't that make your point for you."
Steve had gone totally still.
"Bucky," he said in a voice full of misery.
He could never hear that voice without caving. His whole damn life. James Buchanan Barnes, giant sap.
"Shut up and go to sleep, Steve. It's too fucking cold to be awake."
Steve had been smart enough to ask the next night, and not to ask Bucky. Gabe was patient, and pretty kind about it. Bucky was a little sad to miss the extra warmth.
But every. Little. Thing. was like that. Steve had to make any stupid minor task as difficult as possible. Well, that was one thing that hadn't changed about him. They took away all his illnesses and left the obnoxiousness.
So Bucky didn't exactly discourage the pranks. As sergeant, he could've. He could see them glance as him, when they planned - to dump the juice out of a can of herring into Steve's tent roll, or cook up tall tales about the strategizing ability of European wolves. Part of Bucky would think "come on, he's your best friend,' but the rest of him would think about the sign-up, the grenade, and the science. And he would keep his mouth shut.
Over time, as Steve learned to be less useless in camp and the times piled up when he had either (a) shown excellent leadership or (b) thrown himself in harm's way to save one of them (two mutually exclusive categories), the pranks slacked off to special occasions. Days off, for example, or when Carter wasn't around.
Or when one of them got a brilliant idea, like the time Dernier - mostly through gestures, with a little translation from Jones - convinced Steve that no, in Europe they didn't use fishing poles. They stood in rivers and caught fish with their hands.
By dusk that night, Dernier had a string of trout dangling from his makeshift pole, and Steve had blue lips.
It had been little stuff for a long time since then: jeering at Steve's squeamishness when they lucked into a couple of rabbits, that kind of thing. Steve took it all with that look he'd worn on his face his whole life, any time someone suggested he was too little or sickly to do something. Bucky almost felt better when he saw that familiar expression.
They set up in their little clearing a day out from the science horrors, and the radio spat out 'maintain position.'
For four days.
No 'come back to base,' no 'okay to find civilization,' just 'maintain position,' every time they asked.
They had half a goat and a couple of pounds of cheese from the last village they'd been to prior to the science place, so chow time wasn't awful. It was all the moments in between that stretched on and on.
Everybody's guns were clean enough to eat with by the end of the first day. By the end of the second, they even had cleanish clothes.
On the third afternoon, Steve snuck down to the river for a bath, and the Howlers broke. Steve's shyness was a constant source of ribbing. Bucky figured it was a holdover from the past, when Steve had been sick of being called 'bird bones,' 'chicken bones,' 'bandy-legged,' 'shrimp,' and every other name in the book.
He could've maybe told the other guys. And maybe it would've made a difference to know the ugly truth behind the shiny propaganda story. But he didn't. So Monty snuck down to the river bank and stole Steve's clothes and towel. He brought them back to where they sat around what was becoming the evening stew and sat on them.
They waited for the inevitable squawking, huffing laughter at each other that only sounded more nervous as silence stretched on from the river. Bucky could tell they were all working up to be the first to say, "maybe I should go check on him," when Steve was there beside them, dripping wet, naked, gazing down at them like he was just passing by.
By the whites showing around everyone's eyes, Bucky could see they were as spooked at he was. Where the hell had he come from? How could anyone that enormous be so quiet?
Bucky had seen Steve in various states of undress his whole life, but this was another thing entirely. It was like looking at a Greek statue. He looked at Steve's left thigh, and the scar he'd had since he was 12 - from falling off Mrs. Janacek's balcony trying to get away from the Hennessey boys - was gone.
Did Steve care that they'd erased part of his history like that?
'Shit,' Bucky thought, 'if I bite it, who'll even remember?'
"Jesus," Dugan said, "don't ever let my girl see you like this, or she'll never give me the time of day again."
"I'd like my clothes back, please," Steve said in a voice that sounded mild but made the hair stand up on the back of Bucky's neck.
Monty handed the clothes over. Steve toweled off and got dressed, right there, while the rest of them sat and gawped like numb nuts.
"Thanks," Steve said.
And Bucky should've known. He should've remembered when they were 8, and Giuseppe Liota had taken Steve's last good drawing pencil. Two weeks, Steve had waited. Two weeks of watching and thinking, until he said,
"You shouldn't have taken my pencil,"
so that Giuseppe was saying,
"I'll take your crybaby pencil and any other crybaby stupid thing I want from you, you raggedy little tinker's boy,"
just as Father O'Leary was rounding the corner on his daily morning walk.
Giuseppe got escorted home by the priest and wasn't seen on the streets for days. Steve got a whole box of drawing pencils, care of the Parish Relief Fund, that he made last for over a year.
It was a knack Steve had, to help assholes show themselves in front of interested authorities. Bucky always figured that was half of why he himself had kept his nose so clean in school.
Bucky should've recognized the same look now: watching, waiting. Thin smiles that never reached his eyes.
The following night, after an interminable day of cleaning pristine weapons, yet more goat stew, and a hell of a lot of nothing, Dugan suggested poker.
It was a desperation move. For one thing, only Dugan and Gabe were any good at it, and for another, the pots consisted only of a pile of squashed cigarettes and stubs of chocolate bars that they'd passed around for so long that no one could remember who the original owners were.
"I'll play," Steve said.
Everyone turned to stare at him. Steve never played poker. Maybe the odd hand of rummy. But never poker. He sucked at bluffing.
Steve's expression was mild as milk.
"What the hell," Steve said, "I'm just gonna lose a bunch of cigarettes I won't smoke anyway. At least it'll pass the time."
"Hey Sarge, sorry to take away your backup smoke supply," Gabe said.
Bucky threw a pinecone at him.
"Nah, it's okay. I know you need the smoke to hide your hideous face whenever there are girls around."
Which was hilarious, because if there was one thing French girls liked, it was Gabe Jones.
Bucky ignored Steve's heavy glance. One of the 900 conversations they hadn't had since the rescue was why Bucky had knocked off smoking. He puffed on a couple each day just to keep up on the gossip, but Steve knew his old habits.
No point in smoking when you already felt like electrified wire.
Steve pulled packs of cigarettes out of every pocket and laid them on the ground. And two whole bars of chocolate - with his appetite, how had he kept them? - a pair of the really nice socks they issued to commissioned officers, two dirty postcards, and a small jar of what was obviously the kind of homemade liquor that would knock most guys sideways.
In case anyone ever wondered what it took to make the entire Howling Commandos silent during down time.
"What the ever-living fuck, Steve?" Bucky said finally.
"Figured I'd make it interesting."
Bucky really should've known.
The first few hands went as expected: Steve telegraphed his hands, dropped cards on the ground, and lost his treasures. The dirty postcards went to Morita, a chocolate bar to Dernier, a pile of cigarettes to Dugan. Bucky's luck was about what it always was: just as he was about to be skint, he'd win just enough to keep going on an impossibly good hand.
Then it was Steve's turn to deal. He shuffled with a flourish totally opposite to his fumbles in previous hands. The cards flew through the air and landed in front of each of them in a neat stack.
They anted, and Steve won with four jacks.
"Wow, lucky," he said.
He dealt, they anted, and he won with four queens.
"Huh," he said.
Bucky's entire childhood flashed before his eyes. Why hadn't he ever told them about the time when they were 11 and Steve put a smelt in his Sunday shoes as a revenge for standing him up at the Dodgers game? Or when he tore Steve's best shirt roughhousing too hard and woke up the next day with shoe polish in his hair?
Steve dealt, they anted, and Steve won with four kings.
"Isn't that something," he said.
All the hair on Bucky's body was standing on end. They were sunk. They were all absolutely done for.
Dugan looked ready to sit on his own bowler hat.
"What're you doing, Cap?" he growled.
"Playing cards, Corporal. Is there a problem?"
"Just deal."
He did, and they all watched Steve's hands without blinking. Bucky didn't see anything weird, but he knew Steve. New ham-sized hands or no, just because you couldn't see what was going on, trouble was done brewing. Steve was serving it up to them in hearty portions.
Steve won the hand with four aces. He had all his stuff back, plus Dernier's precious half a pork sausage besides.
Technically, it was Bucky's turn to deal, but Dugan was still staring at Steve with lit fuses in his eyes.
"Deal," he said.
"Why?" Steve asked, "you haven't put anything in the pot."
Dugan laid his jacket on the ground.
Steve won with a straight flush: 2 to 6 of clubs.
"Criss de calice de tabarnak d'osti de sacrament," Denier said as he laid his boots on the ground for the next hand.
Bucky put in his belt, because he could see how this was going.
Steve's face in the firelight could've been carved from stone.
And he just … kept on. Making spooky deals no one could see, giving himself straight flushes that increased one number at a time, until Morita wept with laughter and Dugan chewed his mustache half off his face.
Monty shucked his pants off for the pot at the third flush, even before giving up his shoes.
"A gentleman knows when he's beaten," he said, and stretched his pale, skinny legs toward the fire.
More straight flushes: 5 to 9 of clubs, 6 to 10 of clubs, 7 to jack, 8 to queen, 9 to king, 10 to ace. Then 2 to 6 of hearts. Bucky was down to his undershirt, pants, and skivvies already.
"I must say, it's kind of you to do this when it isn't January," Monty said two hands later.
"Do what," Dugan growled.
"Make us take our own medicine, darling."
That was the hand when Dugan lost his pants.
But no one backed out. They were caught in the net of Steve's creepy card skills and his unmoving expression, his silence.
Bucky watched the whole thing in a haze of disbelief that made him forget to be embarrassed by how skinny he'd gotten. He just shucked off his clothes and laid them in a pile as Steve's straight flushes moved up the deck.
Dernier - always warm-natured - was the first to get down to the skin he was born in. He reached for the dog tags at his wrist, but Steve waved him out of the game. One by one: Monty, Morita, Bucky, Gabe, waved out when they were down to dog tags and bare asses.
The last hand was for Dugan's hat. Six naked men and one fully clothed, peering down at two hands of cards with Dugan's growl like an engine rumbling in the background.
Dugan had a mess of nothing.
Steve had a royal flush. Spades. He reached over and plucked the bowler away from Dugan and perched it on top of his own giant head.
"Well, that was fun," Steve said, "I'm going to bed."
Bucky leaned toward the pile of clothing. It would be nice to return to a state where he didn't have the pattern of bark embossed into his butt cheeks.
But Steve gathered them all up. He gathered up the clothes, the liquor, and the chocolate. He left behind the bits, the bobs, the dirty postcards, and a knee-high pile of cigarette packs.
Just left them behind.
Morita groaned. Monty laughed. Dernier muttered the kind of French they don't put into books.
"What," Dugan snarled.
As if it weren't obvious.
Bark patterns in his ass, goosebumps along his shoulders. 'What the ever living,' Bucky thought.
Then a mosquito landed on his knee.
His palm connecting with his own leg unlocked Bucky's mouth.
"You pus-bucket son of a whore!" he yelled.
Steve stuck his head out of his tent.
"Don't talk about my mother that way. You loved my mother. What would she say, hearing you talk like that?"
"You mother was a goddamn saint, I can't imagine how she raised a cheating shitbag like you."
"Wonders never cease, do they?"
Steve smiled.
"Good night, Sergeant."
Bucky stared at the tent flap. He wondered whether the others would kill him if he set Steve's tent on fire with their clothes in it.
"Big pile of clothes makes a pretty comfortable bed," Steve yelled.
"I hate you," Bucky yelled back.
"Well, there's a lot of me to hate now, isn't there?"
"Give it up, Sarge," Morita said while Bucky was working on a snappy comeback, "he's making a point, and we deserve it."
Sure. The trouncing, definitely. Naked in the woods, maybe.
But nobody deserved those fucking mosquitos. Away from the fire, there were absolute clouds of them, whining in everyone's ears and landing in places you damn well do not want an itchy spot.
On the other hand, it was pretty hilarious to hear Gabe moaning about the mosquito bite on his dick.
All night it went on. Their tents full of mosquitos, the fire needing constant tending to put out enough smoke to try to keep them at bay. Morita made a ring of cigarettes around himself, stuck upright in the ground, which worked great for the 3 minutes they lasted.
"Sarge, why didn't you warn us?" Dugan asked.
"It's that stupid face of his," Bucky said, trying to find a position in which he wasn't assaulted by a rock or a tree root.
"You get hypnotized by all that earnestness. Been falling for it my whole life."
"Until it gets you right in the arse," Monty said, "my sisters are the same way. Terrifying."
Maybe they slept. Maybe. Each time Bucky dozed off, he woke up with more itchy welts.
At dawn, Steve rolled out of his tent and stretched with a yawn.
"Best sleep I've had in months," he said, "thanks guys."
And just. Handed their clothes back.
No use even in punching him, since it would only break another hand.
That afternoon, they got orders: a 40-mile slog cross-country, another HYDRA facility to blow up. Nice of the good old US Army to distract them from their itchy woes by providing some real misery. They walked through 3 days of solid rain.
On the plus side, when they set out, Steve handed Bucky one of the chocolate bars.
"You're too skinny," he said.
It was even better than the dirty pictures.
Nobody ever pranked Steve again. He repaid the favor by staying out of their card games, unless they were on base and needed to fleece another unit.
(later)
"Carter, I don't think you understand how awful he is. How completely, fully, entirely terrible. That his rat bastardy is proportional."
"You're wrong, Barnes. I understand completely. I find it among his most admirable qualities."
"Told you, Buck."
"Our clothes, Peg. Every last damn stitch. And then piled them up and slept on them!"
"Most comfortable bed I'd had in a long time. Smelly, though."
"Barnes, you must know I'd have done the same thing in that situation."
"What?"
"The view must've been marvelous."
"Aw, geez Peggy."
"God. You two deserve each other."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Sergeant. Steve could never deserve me. Not with his piss-poor skills cheating at cards."
"Oh no."
"What. Are you talking about. Carter."
"At least his clothes made a slightly less malodorous bed than others I've slept on."
"Agent Carter, did no one ever brief you that the number one thing you should never do is encourage Steve Rogers?"
"Sergeant, when have you ever known me to follow orders?"
"You're terrible. You're both terrible. And I'm stuck here, knowing you're both monsters, and the world will never believe me."
"It's tough being the Cassandra, Barnes."
"Bucky's just grumpy about the mosquito bites."
"Damn straight I am. I got bit in places I … won't describe in front of a lady. You don't know what that does to a man."
"They're called balls, Barnes, I am aware of their existence."
"How do you even, Steve? With this girl?"
"Mostly I'm in a state of constant shock. It works pretty well."