Work Text:
“You can’t die if you’ve got the wrong dog tags,” Bucky said, lips curled up in a smirk. “Army regulations. Causes a whole mess of paperwork, so it’s against the rules.”
Steve rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. “Buck, really, I’m not scared , I’m just--”
“Humor me,” Bucky interrupted, and held out his hand again, the small bits of metal between his fingers. Something in his posture suggested that he wasn’t going to let up, and he was prepared to spent all day standing there. With a sigh that was bordering on frustration, Steve reached under his shirt and pulled out his own tags, exchanging them quickly with his best friend, looking around quickly to see if anyone else had been watching. “You’re a jerk, you know that?”
Bucky nodded. “Yeah. But you’re the punk that agreed.” With a grin, he swaggered off, draping Steve’s dog tags around his neck and tucking them into his shirt for safe keeping. Steve watched him go, and then tucked the tags, warm from Bucky’s skin, into his own shirt and re-secured his armor.
Maybe it’s superstition, and maybe it’s luck, and maybe it’s a little something more, but the mission ends successfully, and they give each other back their own dog tags at the end of the night. Steve can’t help but think it’s ridiculous, but he also can’t ignore the grin Bucky flashes him a day later when he says, “Hey, it worked last time, we gotta keep a good thing going.”
Before each mission, the tags are exchanged, and the night after, they are returned, until one morning Steve wakes up in his tent with Bucky’s tags still around his neck and there isn’t time to exchange them back before the next part of the mission, so what’s the point?
It’s a week later when Dum Dum notices, prodding the tag around the Captain’s neck and saying, “I think you got the Sarge’s tags, Cap,” and the gig is up. Steve knows that they’re the only two who have been swapping tags now, but rather than lay into Bucky for it, he just shrugs. “Army regulations,” he tells Dum Dum, wearing that smile that the rest of them can’t seem to decide is honesty or good-natured ribbing. “You’re not allowed to die if you’re wearing someone else’s dog tags.”
By Monday, no one in the Howling Commandos is wearing their own ID tags anymore. Jacques and Gabe swapped almost instantly, Dum Dum and Morita traded, and then Monty huffed and pouted until Dum Dum swapped Morita’s for Monty’s. If Colonel Phillips noticed that Sergeant Dugan was wearing British ID tags, he kept the comments to himself.
After the train, when Bucky takes Steve’s name with him into the abyss, the spell is broken. The Commandos each are wearing their own tags the next time they ride out but no one had the heart to tell the Captain, and his tags are gone anyway, so when the Valkyrie crashes into the ice, it’s Bucky’s name around Steve’s neck for the long, long years.
It’s seventy years later that they can talk about it. Bucky is wearing white, the nub of his left arm wrapped in black bandages by Wakandan doctors. Steve notices the silver beads and metal tags around Bucky’s neck. He doesn’t ask where they came from - Hydra wouldn’t have allowed their asset to keep any personal information, and he doesn’t want to know what Bucky’s had to do to get them back. But he reaches into his shirt and withdraws the tags he’s kept since they pulled him out of the ice, and Bucky shoots him that same grin.
“What did I tell you?” he says, almost preening with playful arrogance. “My name around your neck, nothing’s gonna kill ya.”
Steve puts a hand on his shoulder, thumb running along the ball chain. “And mine around yours?” he asks, raising a brow.
Bucky shrugs. “Your name brought me back from the dead,” he answers. When they put him in the chamber to sleep, the tags are still there, a silent promise that he would return.
This time, Steve knows it’s true.