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December 31st, 1943, Little Staughton, England
They get back to base in the late afternoon after a monotonous day of meetings in London. It’s the long way in this time, not coming in on a midnight airplane run from the front but hitching a ride with a local farmer from the one-platform train station in St. Neots. The eight of them just about fit comfortably in the back of the wagon, two prodigious brown mares huffing gently in the winter air as the lot of them pile in.
They’ve already figured out that between them, there’s not a one who knows anything about country living, so Carter’s been training them in not just survival training, but the best way to find shelter in farmland, how to milk cows, and ways of gentling a spooked horse. Secretly, Bucky’s a little gratified at the way Steve’s eyes go wide when one of the big mares stamps her enormous, dinner-plate hoof while Steve’s tentatively reaching out a hand to pet her. Bucky herself has steered well clear of the beasts, not sure it’s in her best interest to get too familiar with something that outweighs her by quite that much.
The back of the wagon is empty enough for them to sit cross legged, close enough to brush knees, but its slatted sides lend little protection from the wind. Soon enough, they’re all curled in a bit tighter, and when Steve grins over at her from across the wagon, her cheeks and the tip of her nose are pink. That’s something so like home, looking up to see Steve’s still-crooked smile and her chill-pinked face, that even with the snow-dusted fields around them instead of the noisy streets of Brooklyn, Bucky feels something in her chest settle.
The farmer turns off a mile away from the airstrip, so they walk the last bit, singing along to Steve’s tuneless whistle. A too-late Christmas carol, first, and then an upbeat Andrew’s sister number. There aren’t a lot of songs they all know, so halfway through the third rendition of “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” Dum Dum and Jim start replacing the lyrics with far filthier versions. It’s lucky the base isn’t far.
The airfield is a convenient stopover for RAF sections moving to and from the coast, and when they get in Monty almost immediately finds two fellas he knows from school and disappears into their ranks. With the New Year’s holiday, there’s a relaxed, nearly festive air to the base, and the rest of them find the makeshift pub nearly full to the gills. Bucky’s not sure if it’s chivalry, fear, or both that means they always get the best table when Agent Carter’s there with them, but she doesn’t much mind, scooting her stool in close so that her elbow brushes Steve’s and Carter has pride of place at the head of the table. She takes it equanimously, lifting one eyebrow delicately at Bucky as she sits.
Dum Dum procures them a few pitchers of beer and pours pints around. Bucky takes a good draught of hers, and though it has a rich, amber taste she’s come to feel that the British beer is not as potent as the stuff she used to drink in Brooklyn, cheap as it was, because she never seems to get more than a little tipsy. When she looks sideways, Steve sips at her own glass slowly. It hadn’t taken them long to figure out that the serum means Steve can’t get drunk anymore, and it only seems to have sharpened her taste buds enough that her previous general apathy toward beer has turned into vague dislike. But there’s nothing else to drink in this pub-that-isn’t-a-pub and Steve’s still working on what it means to be friends to these fellas, so she sips it down. Bucky wishes Steve realized that the ice doesn’t really need to be broken, at this point; they might carry themselves a little stiffly — respectfully — around Steve, but every one of the men at that table is on her team, in their hearts as well as on highly-confidential paper.
If there’s anything Steve excels at, though, it’s gritting her teeth and proving herself. She has settled in, some; since that first mission a couple of weeks ago they’ve been on three more, back to back, and Steve’s command is clearer, more sure, with each. She moves easier with both her shield and her authority. They’re sitting so close together that Bucky has to crane her neck sideways to get a good look at her, so instead she looks at the table, where Steve’s hands — always a little too big for her body, and mostly unchanged — curl around the pint glass, loosening to rap on the table when she gives a hearty, full-throated laugh at some joke Jim makes.
They’ve been there an hour or so when Monty finds them, carrying with him two bottles of Scotch whisky and a pair of British Army Lieutenants, arm jauntily crooked through the elbow of the fair-haired one. By the look of him, Monty’s got a third bottle of whisky in him already. The three bow ostentatiously to one another before parting ways, and Monty drops unceremoniously onto the stool they’ve saved for him. Dum Dum holds out his hand for one of the bottles and pours them all a generous two fingers.
“School chums?” Carter asks. She has the composure of a queen, that one, and it’s asked like she’s making conversation at high tea, not at a sticky table made of a re-purposed door.
“Stet Fortuna Domus,” Monty replies, with a dramatic sweep of his hand. Whisky sloshes over the edge of his glass.
It means nothing to Bucky, but Carter wrinkles her nose and says, “Harrow?” like he’s spit on her shoe.
“Excuse me,” Monty says, leaning forward on his elbows. The unsecured table-top lists toward him, and Bucky and Steve grab the edge to keep it upright. “Learned everything I know there,” Monty continues, heedless of the disruption. He frowns, adds, “Everything I know about Latin and buggery, at any rate.”
Bucky chokes on her beer, coughing it down, and next to her Gabe shakes with laughter. “Come in handy, do they?” Carter asks, nonplussed.
“Rather fallen out of practice, I’m afraid,” Monty says, and Gabe follows it up with something in Latin that sends the pair of them into drunken, incoherent cackles.
“It doesn’t translate well,” Carter says, drily, to Bucky’s raised eyebrow. “A send-up to sodomy amongst comrades.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Steve says, completely straight-faced, tipping her glass in a mock toast. Monty leans across the table to clink rims and nearly upends the tabletop again.
They have two days’ hiatus until their next mission, which means plenty of time tomorrow to sleep off hangovers, and the men take full advantage of it. They make it through both of Monty’s bottles of whisky, at some point procure some food, and by the time midnight creeps closer they’re all stinking drunk except Steve and, Bucky suspects, Peggy, who hasn’t fallen off her stool once that evening, placing her far ahead of the rest of them, Bucky included. She’s not drunk, precisely, but she feels hazy and warm, the press of Steve’s shoulder against her a comforting bulwark.
At the turn of the last year, Bucky was in a desert in North Africa, half a world from Steve, and hoping desperately that Steve never figured out a way to get herself into the war. Of course, when it comes to Steve, Bucky’s always playing catch up; at the New Year, Steve’s new body was already a month old. Now, when Steve looks over at her, flushed pink cheeks and curling tendrils of hair pushed behind her ears, Bucky can’t helps the selfish little rush of pleasure, of rightness, at being by Steve’s side. It’s where she’s always belonged, after all.
Interrupting her thoughts, someone shouts, “Ten!” and then the whole room starts counting down the last few seconds of 1943. At one, Steve slides her arm around Bucky’s waist, pulling them together; so when the cries of Happy New Year ring out, Bucky’s close enough to bring their mouths together without thinking. Steve kisses her back, eager and sharp, so much that Bucky nearly forgets to think about the crowd of people around them and how careful and cautious they’ve been.
It hardly matters; when they pull apart, across the table Jacques is shaking his head, laughing as he pulls put of the sloppy, drunken smack Monty had laid on his lips, and Dum Dum’s looking at Monty with the horror of a next victim. Carter has allowed Gabe one chaste kiss on the cheek, and when he pulls away, hand cupped around her cheek, she catches Bucky’s eye then looks away, slight flush rising up. The rest of the room is cheerful, too, clinking glasses and sloppy hugs and a good few more joking kisses.
Somewhere across the room the opening lyrics to Auld Lang Syne warble up, and by the first chorus someone’s plunking notes on the tuneless piano in the corner and the whole room has joined in. Everyone except Steve, who grimaces at Bucky when she cheerfully sings, “We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,” and knocks their glasses together.
“I hate this song,” Steve says, grumbling under the din of a few dozen drunken soldiers, and Bucky says, “I know.” Their neighborhood was full up of Irish, and Scots, and Scots-Irish, and Auld Lang Syne was a staple at just about every occasion; Bucky’s never figured out why Steve has such an antipathy for it, but something about the maudlin, drunken nostalgia with which it’s always sung never fails to irk her. As usual, Bucky ignores her and keeps singing, throwing one arm over Steve’s shoulder and knocking their temples together on the warbling chorus.
She’s never really thought about the lyrics, just the childish delight of drawing out the chorus as long as she can, voice quavering on the tail end of auld lang syne, but tonight something knots up in her throat as they trail towards the end. “But seas between us broad have roared,” she says, more than sings, voice caught up. As though she’s listening newly, too, Steve turns to look at her, eyes shining, and presses their foreheads together.
“Since auld lang syne,” Steve whispers, ghost of a breath against Bucky’s mouth. Bucky wants to kiss her again, wants to hold her tight and fixed and safe, but without the excuse of the ringing midnight she doesn’t dare. Still, Steve pulls away first, wiping her eyes with the backs of her knuckles, and — for the first time in Bucky’s memory — joins in the singing.
The voices around them trail off at the end of the last chorus, and Bucky suddenly feels something of the clenching aversion Steve must hold at the indeterminate wane. As an ending, a farewell, it holds all of the ambivalence of an uncertain future, and in their lives before, Steve had enough reminders of the unknowability of tomorrow.
“To 1944,” Jim says, lifting his glass.
“To health and prosperity,” Dum Dum adds, and Peggy says, a little wearily, “To the end of this bloody war.”
“To friends,” Bucky says, and they clink their glasses together.