Chapter Text
The ship pulls away from New York in the early hours of the morning. Bucky had said his goodbyes to his Ma and sisters last night before the Stark expo, knowing they wouldn’t be able to handle watching him sail away when there’s a very real chance they may never see each other again – he’s not sure he could have handled it, either. Instead, Steve had accompanied him to the harbour. While other families had wandered away after the ship pulled out, Steve had stayed standing on the boardwalk until the ship was so far out into the ocean that he must have had to strain his eyes to make it out. Bucky had stayed on the deck, staring back at his home, his country and a small pale body wrapped in a too big tattered coat with a mop of messy blonde hair until they were all too small for him to see.
Hours later, he awakens in the cabin below deck where he’s laid top to tail with identically clad soldiers like khaki sardines squeezed into a tin. His sleep thus far has been fretful and sparse, but now the concept of sleeping seems entirely alien to him – how could he, when an overwhelming sense of dread has settled itself on his chest like a body pinning him down? The feeling is one of, for lack of a better term, impending doom. As he fights his way into full consciousness, Bucky thinks something must be wrong with the boat – they’re sinking, perhaps, or caught in the midst of a violent storm. But the cabin is calm and the soldiers on either side of him sleep soundly, blissfully unaware of the ominous pressure pushing down on Bucky from all sides. He stumbles to his feet, tripping over a grumbling Irishman, and makes his way on unsteady sea legs to the stairs that open up onto the deck, where he finds himself alone in the eerie silence.
He has to keep it together - he hasn't broken down since the night he'd received his draft letter. He'd gotten it all out of his system, then, and had remained stoic as he bid goodbye to his weeping mother, confused baby sisters, and - god, he can't think about Steve right now. Standing on the boardwalk and watching until there was no way he could see the ship, what with his poor eyesight, and then standing and watching some more as if he could feel Bucky watching him right back. He had looked so small that Bucky had thanked every god he'd ever heard of that Steve was stuck in New York and not on the boat alongside him, how ever much he wanted to be.
He'd kept it together as he said his goodbyes to Steve, though Steve himself had looked a little shaky through their all-too-brief hug. If the circumstances weren't so dire, it would almost be funny to Bucky, how Steve had seemed far more upset about their parting than he himself had. After all, Steve was only saying goodbye to his best friend and roommate.
Bucky was saying goodbye to the love of his life.
The cold air out on deck allows him to breathe a little easier, as if his dread was a gas filling the cabin below and he has finally gotten his head above the cloud. But the feeling of relief doesn’t last as he looks out over the railings and into the inky blackness of the night. They’re so far from home now that he can no longer see the twinkling lights of the New York harbour. He can’t see anything at all beyond the railing, not even the rolling waves or where the ocean meets the sky. Everything beyond the sparsely lit deck of the ship is pure black, like he’s floating on sea-salt slick wooden floorboards through a void of nothingness. All at once, he knows this is wrong.
He has to get off the boat. He simply cannot go.
It’s not what he’s going towards, but what he’s leaving behind. If he dies in some godforsaken French forest, will his mother be able to feed herself and three young girls without working herself to the bone? If his body is blown apart in a bombed-out Italian village, who will run to the pharmacy to get Steve’s medicine when the fever hits him in the night and he doesn’t have the strength to get up? Would their neighbours be able to hear him call for help if he needed it? Would they come? Would Steve even call out – or simply lie there, stubborn as ever, and let his pride kill him?
He has to get off the boat, now. He can’t see the New York lights anymore but they haven’t been travelling for that many hours. He’s a strong swimmer, and he has to try –
His body is clearly looking out for him even as his mind unravels, because his legs go out from under him before he can do something stupid like throw himself overboard. He collapses to the deck in a pathetic heap, limbs shivering in a way that has nothing to do with the cold, and tries not to think about his Ma and Becca and Daisy and Hope and Steve -
But oh god, his sisters are going to starve, and Stevie’s going to die and Bucky’s going to be on the other side of the world and he won’t even know-
“- okay?” Someone is saying from across the deck, striding towards him with purpose, “You look a little pale, should I-“
He can’t hear, can’t see – it’s as if all his senses have abandoned him and his body is devoting all its energy to trying to get some air into his heaving lungs. His hands are shaking violently and his legs feel weak, like if he weren’t already sitting down he’d flop straight overboard. His lungs don’t seem to be cooperating, refusing to take in any air no matter how quickly he wheezes in rapid breaths. He’s outside, with nothing but salty air constraining him for miles and miles, but he feels claustrophobic, as if the non-existent walls are closing in on him.
In his peripheral vision, Bucky sees a large hand coming towards him, and braces himself for the sharp slap that will snap him out of his hysteria – but it never comes. Instead, a warm hand finds its way to the back of his neck, and just holds him in place, not choking or pushing or scratching, but simply there. He suddenly can’t remember the last time he had hands on him that weren't demanding anything from him.
The other man is speaking, and it takes a good few minutes for Bucky to be able to hear it over the roaring of blood in his ears and the waves below them. He’s counting, gulping an exaggerated breath in and out every now and then as if Bucky has simply forgotten how to breathe and needs a practical demonstration. He wants to be annoyed, but he can’t, not when it’s working. Bucky breathes in when the soldier does, and listens to his quiet, steady counting, exhaling when he reaches nine and then starting again until his breathing feels almost natural again.
“What’s your name? We haven’t met,” the man asks as if he can sense that Bucky has finally calmed down enough to form words. He’s fixing Bucky with a stare that is entirely too intense, but at the same time undemanding, wide green eyes fixing him in place but holding no malice or expectations.
“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038,” He snaps instinctively, as though replying to an enquiring superior officer. Upon remembering where he is, he adds a hesitant; “Bucky.”
“Bucky,” the man echoes as though savouring the way the name feels in his mouth.
“Corporal Daniel Walter Cohen, 35679171. Danny,” The man, Danny, adds, shooting Bucky a sly smile that should feel mocking, but doesn’t.
Now his vision has stopped swimming and his hands are shaking a little less violently, Bucky can examine the man in front of him properly. His first clear thought is of how handsome the other soldier is, and he has to mentally slap himself down like a dog jumping on the expensive furniture. Not here. Keep a lid on it.
It’s true, though. His dark brown hair is sheared into the fresh buzz cut that Bucky’s regiment has so far somehow managed to escape, but the ends curl a little like it’ll spring out in all directions once it’s allowed to grow free. The short cut highlights his strong, chiselled jaw and sharp cheekbones, and in this light he looks like a young Errol Flynn. His eyes are not the clear ocean blue of Steve or the deep chocolate brown of his new friend Gabe from the 107th; but a startlingly pure green that reminds Bucky of lying on his back in Central Park, staring up at the black cherry trees and feeling the summer sun rest gently on his skin.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes out quietly, suddenly feeling far too young and stupid and embarrassed. They’re all going to war, for god’s sake. They’re all leaving their families behind. Most of them aren’t coming back, and they all know it. Danny is likely just as terrified and upset as he is, but has admirably managed to keep his shit together while Bucky falls apart - and now has to spend his first night away from his family comforting some hyperventilating idiot at 3 in the morning.
But Danny doesn’t look annoyed, just a little concerned.
“Hey,” he says gently, in the same voice Bucky uses to talk to his youngest sister, and god, that should piss him off too but it seems he just can’t get mad at this guy – not when his hand is still a comforting presence on the back of his neck. “Shit’s scary. You think I’m not terrified, here? It’s okay to panic a little. We all are.”
It’s a sweet sentiment, and probably true, but Bucky can’t help but look around at the empty deck sceptically. He’s the only one up here having a breakdown, after all. Danny huffs out a small laugh as he follows the progress of Bucky’s gaze over the empty deck as if he can tell what he’s thinking.
“I’m up here too,” He says pointedly, “Couldn’t sleep either. Nightmares. My Ma getting my dog tags in the mail, having to tell my brother that I ain’t coming home…”
A fellow soldier showing such raw vulnerability and openly admitting to weakness makes Bucky feel dizzy. The knowledge that Danny is laying himself low to put himself on a somewhat equal level with Bucky’s pathetic, anxiety-ridden form makes his blood flow quicker, and his cheeks feel warm. It’s so unlike the pointlessly macho, stoic, emotionless persona that is beaten into them in basic training that he almost forgets where they are, and where they’re headed.
But there’s a sound to their left, footsteps on the cabin stairs, and suddenly they’re both painfully aware of their position: crouched on the deck together, heads so close their foreheads are almost pressed against each other, with Danny’s hand still warm against his nape. They untangle themselves quickly, but with a reluctance Bucky believes he senses in Danny’s movements, too, and Danny helps him stand on unsteady legs.
“Thank you,” he tells the other man, and it feels like he’s said too little and too much all at once. Danny opens his mouth to say something, hands having not yet released Bucky’s elbows from where he grabbed them to help him up, but the sea-sick soldier who throws himself out onto the deck to vomit violently over the railing breaks the moment in twain. Danny shoots him one last soft smile as he finally lets Bucky go, and they retreat silently to their separate sleeping quarters without speaking another word. Stumbling towards his sleeping bag in the dark, Bucky feels like the sleep that so cruelly rejected him earlier than night might come a little easier, now.
In the coming days, he and Danny bump into each other a handful more times, despite their sleeping quarters being on opposite ends of the ship. He learns a few things about the other man in the quiet conversations on the deck that seem to become a nightly ritual between them. He grew up in a farming town in rural Kentucky with his grandparents, his Ma, and his younger brother Patrick – too young to enlist, luckily. His Pa died in the Great War, just like Steve’s. His grandpa taught him how to play the guitar, and his grandma taught him how to ride a horse.
In return, Bucky tells him about what he’s left behind. The things he won’t miss (a dead-end job, unpaid bills, a kitchen full of rats) and the things he will; an ageing mother, three young sisters, a sickly roommate. It hurts a little to relegate all that Steve is to him to the status of ‘roommate’, but if he were to start waxing lyrical about exactly what Steve means to him, and has meant to him his whole life, his fellow soldiers might get suspicious.
It’s tempting, sometimes. To let something slip, casually, or to simply walk up to his commanding officer, an ugly balding old man, and kiss him straight on the lips. To say I was queer all along, and you don’t want my kind here, so send me back. He didn’t admit to what he is when he first got the draft letter, though, so it’s a little too late now. He doesn’t want to go to war, of course. He doesn’t want to kill anyone, and most of the time he doesn’t want to die, either. But the thought of marching back into their Brooklyn apartment clutching a blue slip and explaining that he isn’t fighting the war Steve so desperately craves to be a part of because he’s queer is so, so much worse than facing down the barrel of a gun. He knows the disgusted look on Stevie’s face would shatter him in a way that no bullet or bomb ever could.
So he tells Danny about his roommate, his childhood friend, and nothing more, though Bucky has the strangest feeling there is a spark of understanding behind those kind green eyes. When the ship finally docks in England, their regiments are given different orders, and they’ll likely never see each other again. It doesn’t really matter. They were only talking; quiet little conversations about safe, surface topics when sleep eluded them both and the tides were too strong to sit idly in the cabin.
But those soft viridescent eyes stay with him, and when he jerks awake in the middle of the night, he swears he can feel a warm hand on the back of his neck as he drifts back down into sleep.
Their shore leave in England isn’t long – they have just enough time to recover from their seasickness and then make themselves sick all over again by blowing their meagre paychecks on cheap beer in the local pubs. But even bombed out, dark and frightened, London is beautiful.
France isn’t.
It could be, he’s sure. It probably was a few years ago. He’s seen postcards and paintings in abandoned farmhouses of idyllic countryside, fairy tale forests full of wildflowers and sweet chocolate box villages. But the France they piled into off the boat is a shell of its former self. The once beautiful countryside has been razed into a wasteland of barbed wire and debris. Where there are people, they are untrusting, hollowed out, vacant. Bucky has never been glad for Stevie’s poor health, but knowing he’ll never have to see the haunted look of the French people in Steve’s eyes, safe as he is half a world away, gets him pretty damn close.
They don’t really get to do much sightseeing, although it doesn’t seem as though there is much left standing to see. The sights are familiar and repetitive as they make their way to the front lines; the grey of the English Channel as the ferry ships them over, the wheels of a Jeep slugging through thick mud, the inside of yet another khaki tent. By the time they’re crouched in their assigned trench, it’s almost a relief to look out onto the barren expanse of No Man’s Land. At least it’s something different.
The night before their first fight – their first kills - is restless. An ominous knowing sits heavy on the chest of every man called up, as if they’re sleeping in the shadow of Pompeii. Not all of the men are new, and though none are immune to the undercurrent of anxiety that washes over them all, the experience of those who have fought before is obvious. They handle their weapons with steady, sure hands, perceptive eyes fixed on the horizon and watching constantly for movement. Their shoulders are loose without the borderline hysteria that is bubbling beneath the surface of the new recruits.
Bucky tries to imitate their stance, painfully aware of his rank and the expectant eyes on him, but he feels like a child being forced into his father’s suit to go to church, drowning in fabric. The shoes are too big, and though he tries to fill them, the eyes that constantly follow him and size him up find him wanting every time. A few chevrons on his arm are all that separates him from the fresh young blood that look to him, scared and confused, for guidance.
His hands are shaking. When he picks up his rifle, they stop.
His first kill is anti-climactic, really. He calls it that in his head – his first kill – although he knows that’s not what it is, really. Maybe that’s why it makes so little impact on him. He carefully doesn’t think of his father, furious fists bearing down on his younger self, spitting venom with his mother’s blood still fresh on his broken knuckles. He doesn’t think of the hands around his throat and the desperation with which he’d shoved the bigger man, unwilling to give in and leave his sisters unprotected in this world – or in that house. He doesn’t think about the corner of the coffee table, or the blood soaking into the carpet. He hadn’t meant to, but he’s not sorry that it happened.
He doesn’t think about it, and he calls this his first kill.
It’s a good shot, all things considered. A bullet meets a pale forehead, just below a standard-issue steel helmet, just above the eyes. He’s too far away to see what colour they are, and he’s glad. He wonders if his mother will be able to see it in his eyes – that he has taken lives. He wonders if Steve will recognise him when he gets back to Brooklyn. If he gets back to Brooklyn.
He feels a rush of something – adrenaline, perhaps. His muscles and bones are vibrating beneath his skin, but his hands stay perpetually steady on his rifle. When he pulls one away to wipe the mud from his face, it shakes. When it resettles on the barrel of his gun, it’s steady again. Beside him, a young man is retching into the dirt – perhaps from his own kill, or perhaps from witnessing Bucky’s. Bucky doesn’t feel sick. He doesn’t feel much of anything.
But crucially, he doesn’t feel happy, or proud, or ecstatic, and it comes as a relief. Numbness is not necessarily the reaction he should be having if the shattered faces of his comrades are anything to judge by. But he didn’t enjoy it – killing. It just felt like nothing at all.
After the first firefight, they aren’t given time to recover. They’re given no time to adjust at all, in fact. This part of France is desperately in need of additional troops, and they’re immediately thrown further into the fray to fill in the gaps in the front lines. They’re told hold our position as if that is something foot soldiers like Bucky have any control over. What their superiors actually mean is kill as many of them as you can before they kill you. That’s the only thing they can really do.
And Bucky does. He’d been pegged as a sharpshooter in basic training – it’s one of the reasons, along with his affinity for convincing his fellow soldiers to listen to him and his tactical mind, that he’d been advanced through the ranks with startling speed. Such a young Sergeant, with no prior experience, is almost unheard of. Any doubts or snide comments the other men have about how exactly he achieved his title are quickly put to bed when they see him shoot.
He’s spent years watching Steve’s innate artistic talent grow as he put pen to paper, and listening to Steve’s Ma command the organ at the Roger’s church like it was built specifically for her, or cheering on Becca as she takes to any sport she tries in the schoolyard like a fish to water. He had waited for his own talent to emerge for a long time, but had eventually given up - after all, there can't be something special about everyone. In a way, it’s a relief to find that he does have a talent after all. It’s just a shame that his talent appears to be killing people.
Today, their firefight had been mercifully brief, but bloody. They’d lost 3 men from Bucky’s regiment – Bucky can’t bring himself to care or keep track of anyone outside the 107th, though the other units had likely suffered casualties, too. Morale is surprisingly high, however; it’s not always easy to tell, but it seems the Germans had come out of this one worse.
The aftermath of the fight finds him sitting on a crate outside the medical tent where some of his boys are being patched up. He's counting his kills, carving a small tally into the butt of his rifle with his father’s old penknife, but he's not sure why – he’s certainly not proud of them. It’s not that he needs to know the number, necessarily; it’s that he needs to know that he knows. The day he wakes up unable to tell how many lives he’s taken, he’ll know that he’s crossed a line, journeyed too far from the boy he used to be to ever return to Brooklyn and put his arm around Stevie and hold his baby sister like nothing’s changed.
A week into their time on the Western Front, and he’s already up to 13. 7 are from today; 3 in the chest, 1 in the neck and 3 headshots. He tries to make it clean – his aim’s good enough now that he has a choice, unlike his fellow soldiers who fire blindly into enemy lines, hoping a few bullets will meet a body before a few bullets meet their own.
“Good work out there,” a mud-covered soldier tells him amicably with a lopsided smile, ducking out from a neighbouring tent to approach him. It makes Bucky’s blood run hot, flushing a little under the praise but mostly under his sudden, inexplicable anger.
He doesn’t want to be good at this. He doesn’t want this soldier’s commendation. He doesn’t want to be a prodigy at putting bullets between the eyes of boys who are just doing what he’s doing: following orders, swallowing propaganda, shooting in the direction they’re pointed. He didn’t want to kill anyone in the first place, for god’s sake. How can this man stand before him and say good work out there as if murdering young men with no more choice than they have is worthy of praise?
His anger (at himself, at this soldier, at his superiors, at the whole fucking war) must show on his face, because the soldier visibly recoils, taking a whole step backwards as if that will save him from Bucky’s wrath. It’s only when he steps backwards into the light that Bucky recognises him, soaked head to toe in mud as he is: Danny, the soldier he met on the boat. The one who had placed a gentle hand on the back of Bucky’s neck and breathed with him in the dark, and had never told another soul about his near breakdown.
All the fight goes out of him at once, and that must show, too, because Danny stops in his hasty retreat backwards and looks at Bucky warily with sea-green eyes narrowed.
“I meant-“ he starts, but Bucky doesn’t really care what he meant, and it doesn’t really matter now, anyway.
“It’s fine. Thanks,” he tells Danny, watching the other man’s shoulders slump with relief once it becomes clear he hasn’t irreparably offended Bucky. There is a long moment of awkward silence that finds each of them occupied with pointless fidgeting; Danny rocking back on his heels and examining the wildflowers under his boots with the interest of a botanist but without a lick of the knowledge, and Bucky flicking his father’s rusty penknife open and closed to a beat only he can hear.
When they speak again, it’s simultaneously.
“What was your-“
“Do you want to-“
Both huff out an uncomfortable laugh and Bucky waves the knife through the air in a little gesture he hopes translates as you go first.
“I was going to, I mean, do you want –“ Danny begins, suddenly nervous and stumbling over his words in a way that makes Bucky’s heart beat a little faster. It’s disturbingly close to the way that Steve would mumble and mutter when Bucky pushed him to talk to a girl on one of their double dates, wanting to connect but unsure of how he would be received, “Um, dinner’s up. I’m gonna grab a plate, if you – come with me? If you want to, I mean. Yeah.”
Holy shit, Bucky thinks, they’re gonna eat him alive. Danny’s stuttering like he’s asking out the prettiest girl at the dancehall, and the longer Bucky stays silent and looks up at him through his eyelashes, the deeper Danny’s honest to god blush becomes. They’re lucky the few other soldiers braving the cold for a cigarette aren’t within hearing distance, because Danny’s reading queer like a neon sign. He’s sure a few of the men have got some theories about Bucky, too; he’s never been needlessly macho in his behaviour and movements like some of these guys, he never talks about his girl back home, and he knows he’s pretty. If Bucky were smart, he would quietly shoot the guy down right now, tell him to tone it down a little, before anyone else comes to the wrong conclusion about them and they get sent packing with a dishonourable discharge, or worse. But the attention and quiet hope in those big green eyes begins to thaw the ice that had settled in his bones as soon as he has set foot on European soil, and he can’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he closes his knife with a practised flick and tucks it away in his boot as he stands. They’re quiet as they walk to the mess hall, matching steps like they’re on the march again, and when they reach it, Danny pulls the flap of the tent back for him to enter like he’s holding the dancehall door open for a dame.
It feels - it feels nice. Misplaced, in the middle of a war zone, with eyes all around and threats coming from their own ranks just as they come from outside. But it feels nice, damn it, can't he just have this one thing? Tonight, he'll let Danny stand a little too close, and blush when he manages to make Bucky laugh, and stare a little too long when Bucky brings his cigarette up to his lips.Tomorrow, he'll let him down gently, tell him it's too dangerous to start some pointless queer fling in the den of wolves their living in. Tomorrow, he'll send Danny away.
He's sure he will.