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FRANCE, JULY 1944
“I dunno — something a bit boyish about her, Buck,” Dugan muses.
Bucky gawks, lowering the shaving brush, and he really can’t decide what’s more ridiculous: the disproportionately outraged expression Bucky’s sporting or the lather still covering half of his face, seemingly forgotten and melting down his neck with alarming rapidity. “Boyish? Get outta here.”
Oh, Steve thinks with a familiar level of exasperated fondness, here we go.
“I’m just sayin’ —”
“No way you’re callin’ Marlene Dietrich boyish. Have you seen the broad?”
“I’m just saying, she’s always wearing those suits and bossing everyone around —”
“So is Carter, and I don’t see you lookin’ at her with anything but stars in your eyes.”
“But Carter don’t go around kissing on other women, though,” Dugan argues, then turns to Steve with wide eyes. “Does she?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re looking at me for,” Steve grumbles from where he’s bent over a notebook, scribbling doodles in the margins more than he’s actually writing down the supplies he needs to bother the quartermaster about. France in the summer, unsurprisingly enough, is fucking hot, and despite everything else Steve’s brand-new shiny body can handle, it’s not immune to sweating. The moisture beading at his temples from the humid air would be distracting enough even without the pack of restless assholes commandeering the already suffocating officer’s quarters and by proxy, said officer’s attention. “I’m staying out of this. You don’t wanna get between Bucky and Ms. Dietrich.”
Dugan turns to Morita next for assistance, but he just shrugs from where he’s flipping through a flinty magazine. Steve’s not a hundred percent sure where he got it — it definitely wasn’t in the tent before the bunch of them showed up looking for shade — and he’s even less sure if the thing’s actually something blue or just some new, Trojan horse form of propaganda; despite the half-naked woman on the cover turning cat-like eyes to the camera, Jim’s expression is one of profound and utter boredom. “Dunno what to tell you — I agree, but I guess Sarge just likes ‘em heavy-handed.”
“Ain’t she a little old for you?” insists Dugan, chewing at the stubby end of a cigar he's been dragging around with him for the better part of two months now. It occurs to Steve that he might try to light up in the stuffy space of this tiny, sorry-ass excuse of a tent, in which case Steve will, regrettably, need to light him on fire.
“Aw, c’mon. Age is nothing in the face of true love.” Next to him, Dernier makes an exaggerated retching sound. Bucky rolls his eyes.
“You can say what you want, but my point stands — she’s got the looks, the talent, the character — in my book, that’s one hell of a dame,” he sighs as he goes back to shaving the other half of his face.
“Maybe Cap could introduce you,” Jones suggests, tipping back in his chair with a sly look.
Bucky barks a laugh. “Yeah, sure, why not.” He kicks out at Steve’s shin to get his attention, grinning when he looks up with chagrin. “First time for everything, right?”
Steve finally lets his notebook drop, resigned. “Yeah, as if I haven’t been your third wheel before.”
“C’mon, you were touring all that time,” Jones continues, wheedling. “Don’t tell me you never met any of them shiny famous people.”
“Yeah, come on, Rogers,” Morita joins in, rolling his shoulders in a lazy stretch. The magazine has apparently lost appeal in favour of, once again, bullying Steve into a USO story. Figures. “Share with the class.”
“I didn’t…” he tries, tapping his pencil against his chin absently before he breaks into a grin. “Well, actually, I did get to meet Rita Hayworth once.” If his smile turns a bit smug when they all groan in chorused outrage, well. He’s not exactly immune to rising to the bait, either. “Only for a short while, though. She was real nice. Taught me how to fix up the stage makeup in a jiffy and whatnot.”
Bucky stares, blank. Then he reaches up and whacks him on the back of the head, leftover lather flying.
“Ow, fuck – what was that for?”
“You met Rita Hayworth,” Bucky starts dangerously, razor pointed in the general direction of Steve’s forehead, “yet when I asked you if you did anything interesting back home, you spent 45 minutes telling me —“
“Oh, not this again —” Steve groans.
“— about the protest in Union Square —”
“It was relevant at the time!”
"Hold up," Dugan tries to interject, frowning, "they made you wear makeup?"
“You wrote me not one, but two separate letters mentioning Mr. Capriotti’s daughter who just took over the butcher’s shop —“
“—she’s nice, she told me to say hello to you, you ungrateful ass —“
“Unbelievable,” Bucky finishes, sitting back on his haunches. “You’re fuckin’ hopeless. Forget you introducing me, you’ll just kill my chances.”
“I think your charming personality’ll do that for you,” Steve throws back, and narrowly avoids another clip to the head.
“He don’t even need a personality,” Dugan laments as Bucky wraps up shaving. “All those fancy broads, they like ‘em dumb and pretty.”
Dernier smirks. “One of two — good odds, no?”
“No, no, no — Dietrich looks like she’d need a funny fella to keep her interested,” Morita interjects.
Bucky frowns at him through the mirror. “I’m funny.”
“Yeah, funny-lookin’,” Steve adds under his breath.
“Envy suits none of you,” Bucky proclaims, getting back up to get dressed. “And I’m sure she’d agree with me."
“Yeah? You gonna go over there before the show and shoot your shot?”
“See if I don’t.” He whips the shirt on as if for emphasis, and the cotton sticks to the damp skin of his collabone where the shaving cream's melted all the way. That stain'll be a bitch to get rid of. Steve resolutely doesn't point it out. “See if Miss Marlene and me don’t get hitched and book it straight to Hawaii while the rest of you miserable bastards spend your summer in a foxhole.”
“Heard Hawaii’s nice this time of year,” Dugan affirms with a sage nod. “Plenty of Jap bombs at the ready to keep you warm through the winter, too. No offense, Jim.”
“None taken, you massive, massive pinhead,” Morita yawns before giving Bucky a pointed look. “You done with the mirror or do you need more time to preen?”
Bucky leers. “Well now that you mention it, I might wanna take care of some other areas before I —”
“Gentlemen.” They all snap to attention at Peggy’s clear voice from the mouth of the tent, and Steve gets a moment to appreciate the gobsmacked look on Bucky’s face and the aborted way he scrambles to square away the rest of his appearance before he turns around and takes stock of the blond woman walking in step with Peggy, and then he’s staring a little himself, awe-struck.
“I believe you all know our guest of honor,” Peggy says, smiling slyly at their collective expression. “I was just showing Ms. Dietrich around, and she expressed an interest in meeting the squad whose praises the entire camp has been singing all week.”
“It seems you’ve been quite the morale boost, here. Not sure I’ll be able to follow,” the woman says in lightly accented English, her husky voice light and teasing as she smiles his way. “But it’s an honor, Captain Rogers.”
He shakes her hand somewhat mechanically, and it’s the distant registering of the firmness of her grip which proves effective in stopping the incredulous mantra of he’s talking to Marlene fucking Dietrich and kicks his brain back into gear. “Honor’s all ours, ma’am.”
Peggy, mercifully, takes on the rest of the greetings, with Marlene exchanging a few pleasant words with each of them over a handshake and smiling warmly at something Dernier says in uncharacteristically bashful French, before turning back to Steve. Ridiculously, he thinks as she meets his eye, he thought she'd be shorter. Or maybe that's just the aura of casual confidence she carries herself with giving her that added bit of stature, her perfectly coiffed hair and plain WAC uniform browns somehow anchoring her to her surroundings with ease instead of standing at odds with each other.
He's staring. He should probably stop staring.
Jesus, Buck might've had a point.
“I do have to say, the tales circulating around here about your unit are especially interesting. One has to wonder if they’re all entirely true.”
“You know how it is, ma’am — the barracks love their fishing stories,” Morita pipes up, shrugging as if to say what can you do, or maybe and we love playing along, his hands crossed primly behind his back. The dirty magazine, Steve notes, is pointedly missing from plain view.
“Quite. Or perhaps you’re just modest. A couple of them I particularly enjoyed —” She glances back at Peggy as if for confirmation. “Something about jumping onto a grenade?”
Steve clears his throat. “That one’s on me. I, uh. Didn’t know it was a dummy at the time,” he says, eyes suddenly finding a keen interest in examining the water stains snaking over the roof of the tent. God, he’s never living that one down.
“I see. What about singlehandedly blowing up a Nazi base?”
Dugan smirks, puffing up a little. “You’ll have to narrow that one down, ma’am.”
She arches a single brow at him. “In cross dress, was it?”
“Also true,” Jones chimes in, wincing. “Maybe not our proudest moment, admittedly.”
“No? I thought it sounded rather fun. I don't suppose you get many chances to dress up over here, which is a shame,” she comments breezily. “And the one about stealing and then defacing a tank in occupied territory? Felt a bit outlandish, I have to admit.”
Steve side-eyes Bucky, still conspicuously quiet and standing ramrod straight, and his mouth tugs up at the corner. “That would be Sergeant Barnes’ doing, ma’am. He’s our designated marksman and, uh, decorator.”
She laughs, turning her attention to Bucky and jolting him out of whatever reverie he was stuck in. “Is that right? Well, then. I can't say I've done all that much shooting," her grin turns conspiratory, "They've yet to give me a gun, you see, no matter how much I keep asking — but I do know a thing or two about provoking the enemy. I am a great fan of your work, Sergeant.”
“I’m — likewise, ma’am. Big fan,” Bucky manages, rallying with visible effort. “Especially of the whole, y’know, calling Hitler an idiot on the radio thing.”
“Yes, people seem to be enjoying that one quite a bit. What was it you wrote, again?”
“I, uh — greetings —” he pauses with a nervous smile, eyes flicking entreatingly in Peggy’s direction.
“Cunts,” Marlene finishes with a roguish tilt of the head. Peggy lets out a quiet bark of a laugh and makes a valiant attempt to cover it with a cough when the back of Bucky’s neck flares a particularly deep shade of red.
Bucky swallows. “Yeah, that. From Brooklyn. That’s in New York. The city.” He motions awkwardly between Steve and him. “Where we’re from.”
“Yes, I’m familiar. Funny people," she says, smile widening. "Handsome, too, if present company is anything to go off of.”
Bucky makes a noise bearing an uncanny resemblance to that of a failing engine. To his right, Morita looks positively gleeful.
“We sure try to be. Ma’am.”
“Call me Marlene,” she corrects, waving him off. “All these formalities make me feel terribly old, and that just won't do when I have to kick my legs around on stage for over an hour, will it?”
“Bu — uh, James. James Barnes. Pleasure to meet you, Marlene,” Bucky says, and then looks like he’s physically fighting to restrain himself from saying anything else for the foreseeable future. Predictably, it fails. "And I'm. Well, I'm sure your legs would be swell even if you felt 90 years old." His brain seems to catch up to his mouth about two seconds too late, which is when he snaps it back closed. Thankfully, Marlene just laughs.
"Oh, I do like that. Might use it for my next tour headline."
Surprisingly, Peggy is the one to take pity on his struggle, eyes dancing with amusement. “I hate to cut the riveting conversation short, but unfortunately we only have time for a quick run-in. I’m needed back at HQ for a meeting, and I’m assuming Ms. Dietrich has to get ready for the performance?”
Marlene nods curtly. “Yes, well, gentlemen – you seem to be doing quite a bit of good, if unorthodox, work. Keep it up. If my photographer isn't in one of his moods later, we might even take a picture together, yes? Something to keep the press happy and send to the sweethearts back home?"
"No sweethearts," Morita says with a forlorn expression, clapping one hand over Bucky's shoulder in faux-sympathy. "Sarge here is just too shy, I'm afraid."
"Oh? Now that truly is a shame." She grins that million-watt smile at them again, landing on Bucky last with a wry twist of the mouth. Bucky’s face attempts something complicated and appears to get stuck half-way through, apparently finally having reached the blackout point of no return. Steve wishes, not for the first time during the whole interaction, that he had a camera. "Enjoy the show, and I hope to see you around.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Steve cheerfully answers for him. “Sure will.”
There’s a perfectly controlled silence as the pair walks away, Peggy tossing one last shrewd look their way. Bucky drops down onto the cot next to him, eyes glazed over.
And then, pandemonium.
“Oh my god,” Gabe gasps after a solid minute, clutching at his side. “Oh Jesus —That’s in New York, the city. I need that on a newsreel. Real — that’s some real educational shit, Sarge.”
“Fuck, look at his face, I think he’s blushing — you blushing, Barnes?”
“That’s not a blush,” Dum Dum crows, tears streaming down into his mustache. “That’s not a — pretty sure that’s a fucking aneurysm. Pretty sure Ms. Marlene broke him.”
“Buh-James Barnes, nice to meet you —“
“— good golly me, but I have to say, your legs are just swell, ma'am —"
"— here he comes, folks, the greatest charmer the great city of New York has to offer, hide your daughters —”
“Write to us, won’t you Buck?” Steve jumps onto the bandwagon, eyes going comically wide and earnest. “Send a postcard or two from your honeymoon.” That sends the rest of them off the deep end again, cackling with renewed fervor.
“Just so’s it’s on the record,” Bucky mumbles inconsolably from somewhere behind his hands, “she did call me handsome. Also, I fucking hate all of you.”
It takes a good minute but they start to wind down eventually, and Steve realizes with a start that his heat-induced foul mood has dissipated almost entirely. Neither God nor the hell of being stuck in a mosquito-riddled swamp in the middle of July can take this away from him, no sir. Steve might've made a fool of himself in front of dozens of women over the years (and usually, Bucky) but none of them had been Marlene goddamn Dietrich. He's got ammunition to last him years.
It's around the time Steve is dreamily envisioning retelling this particular anecdote as part of his best man's speech at Bucky's wedding one day that the real-life Bucky looks up, squints like he’s processing the last fifteen minutes of conversation all at once, and then turns to Steve with an eerily calm expression.
“You.”
Steve freezes like a deer in headlights.
“You idiot shrimp motherfucker,” Bucky says very, very deliberately. “You jumped on a fucking what?”
