Chapter Text
You understand that 1934 hasn’t been an easy year for anyone. Heck, the past five years haven’t been easy on anyone, but it doesn’t excuse not putting in a little effort every now and then. Not everyone can get by on clownery the way that James Barnes does. The school’s Christmas break is closing in on you with a vengeance, and you’ve got one last chance to get your history grade up from a B to an A minus. This group project is the breaking point. If you don’t get an A flat on this project, there’s no point in trying on the final.
And James Barnes.
James Barnes thinks he’s a comedian. If he contributes anything at all to your group, it’s a half-researched, common-knowledge quip here and there. Then he leans back and expects the world to congratulate him for putting in less than the minimum effort. He’s driving you up a wall.
When the day comes for you to get your grade back, you can sort of see the red marker bleeding through the back of the page, and your stomach drops. Your frustration must be evident when you meet up with your group because James snatches your rubric out of your hand and reads it aloud to the whole class. “It’s a B plus,” he says. “It’s a good grade. Heck, I know it kicks my grade up, anyway. You ought to just calm down about it, sweetheart.”
You've never socked anyone across the jaw before, so there's no way you could've known how much it would ache in the bones of your hand. Oh, but it does ache when you do it, quick as a whip. Even you didn’t really see it coming.
James sputters as he holds his jaw and looks down at you in shock. “Hey, what—?” he starts.
And as much as your hand hurts, you’re already raring to go for another one because he darn well deserves it. After the next one, he sees you gearing up for a third and dodges so violently that he falls over, and in a second you’re railing on him seeing only red.
The next thing you know, you’re seated in the principal’s office next to James Barnes, cradling your sore hand and wondering what your parents are gonna say.
James clears his throat and starts to speak because, apparently, you can’t catch a break. “Now that I’ve had time to think,” he says, “I’ve decided to admit that I’m wrong and you’re right. I’m sorry, and let’s be friends, okay?”
He extends his hand for you to shake, and you only stare at it. “You’re just saying that because I handed your rear end to you.”
“Only half right,” he corrects you. “I’m also thinking that if we can get together and let the bigwigs know that we’ve gotten over our grievances on our own, they’ll let us off with a light sentence.”
“Oh, so you don’t actually think you ought to be sorry at all,” you decide, turning away from him again.
“Well, I’m not gonna go around throwing punches about it,” James grumbles.
The door to the principal’s office slams shut and you hear him talking to the secretary, sending a spike of panic right through your middle. “Fine,” you sigh, having run out of options. “Let’s be friends, James.”
“Fantastic,” he says with a grin. “But you oughtta know that all my real friends call me Bucky, and we’re gonna be best friends.”
You nod. “Okay,” you say. “Bucky.”
“That’s the ticket,” he says. When he shakes your sore hand and you yelp, he winces and pats it all gentle-like.
In the office, he takes full credit for the incident in the hallway, admitting that he provoked you and emphasizing that you’ve worked out your differences. Something you heartily agree to. In the end, you get out with a weekend of detention each. You shudder to think of the consequences if you and Bucky hadn’t decided on being friends.
It isn’t until the new year begins that you figure out something about Bucky. Virtues of paying more attention now that he’s someone who’s supposed to be your friend. At lunchtime, he doesn’t buy lunch. Most kids don’t, of course. Just a sign of the times, but most kids bring something from home. You count the days he goes without. It’s every single one. He doesn’t eat a darn thing unless Steve Rogers makes him.
On the subject of Steve Rogers, they’re thick as thieves, him and Bucky. Everyone knows they’re friends, but you had no idea how ready and willing Bucky is to go to bat for him. All the fights he gets in make sense, suddenly. He’s in the dead middle of the food chain, punching up when the bigger guy punches further down than he has any right to. According to the grapevine, shortly after your fight with Bucky, he took a real beating for Steve that put him out of commission from his job for two weeks.
You hadn’t known he was working a job, either. The only thing that makes that feeling worse is when you learn that it’s more than one. If that doesn’t make up for a lack of contribution to silly school projects, you don’t know what does. There’s no getting around the guilt of everything you assumed, but you never work up the nerve to apologize to him.
In many ways, you grow up together. Although, it may be more accurate to say that you grow up adjacent to each other. Your friend groups are a perfectly symmetrical Venn diagram, so it makes sense to cross a little bit into each other’s circle.
At school, you overhear him now and then when folks ask him who you are and he responds, “Oh, that’s my best friend,” like it’s his favorite joke. Even Steve seems in on it, shooting him conspiratorial looks when he says so. It doesn’t bother you as much as it might. He’s friendly to you in the hallways and smiles at you across rooms. He’s a sturdy, almost comforting presence all the way up to graduation.
The next few years give you the space you need to calm down about a lot of things. Mostly, it’s just a matter of growing up. The war certainly puts things of actual importance into perspective. Silver stars go up in windows. Half of the stars on your street alone turn gold after a while.
Your work keeps you busy and distracted from thinking about those poor boys that ship out to training camps all over the states and then to England by the hundreds every week. There’s some fulfillment in secretarial work, especially at a rubber manufacturer where good work is a matter of life or death overseas. Even so, it doesn’t keep you distracted from the old busybodies in your neighborhood.
“A nice girl like you ought to be married at your age,” they tell you. “Ain’t there anybody willing to take you?” You don’t tell them that plenty have tried, and you’ve been disinterested in all of them. No, things are much better for you the way that they are for the time being. Besides, there is a war on. There will be better times for that kind of thing later on, when it’s all over. If it will ever be over.
Especially on a day like today, you’re praying for a swift end to the war. Every higher-up at the factory acts like they’re the busiest they’ve ever been and all the minutia is getting passed off to you. The thing about minutia, of course, being that it builds up like nobody’s business. The fact that you’re able to slip away for even a fifteen-minute coffee break is a blessing. Cream and sugar is like manna. You close your eyes on the first sip and don’t open them again until you hear unfamiliar footsteps coming down the hallway.
It’s Bucky—you can see him through the break room windows. He’s dressed up in uniform which should probably surprise you more than it does, but it seems like every boy you ever knew growing up (except good ol’ Steve Rogers) is in the service these days. It’s honestly just his general presence that nearly stuns you silent. What the heck could he be doing here of all places?
When he finally sees you, he grins wide and steps into the room. “Well, well, well,” he says. “If it isn’t my best friend. Fancy seeing you here.”
“Bucky Barnes,” you return. “I guess they’ll let just anybody in here these days.”
He shakes his head. “Not really, but I can be pretty convincing.”
You set your mug down on the table next to you and fold your arms over your chest. “I see Eisenhower got you too.”
“Yeah, well…” he says, looking down at his uniform. “I figured this getup don’t make me look half-bad. What could it really hurt?”
You don’t bring up the gold stars. Better not to sour the mood. “It’s been over a year since I last saw you, hasn’t it?” you ask him. “Not since Steve’s birthday party, right?”
“Must’ve been,” he says. “Something about the fourth of July just breeds enlisted men. I’ve been down at a bootcamp in Georgia. Camp Toccoa, maybe you’ve heard of it.”
“Oh, sure,” you say. “So, what brings you in?”
Bucky nearly freezes, it seems like. He glances down at the mug on the table and shifts his weight. “Does the coffee here taste like rubber?” he asks you, keeping his tone light and nonchalant. “If not, I could use a cup if you’re willing to share.”
You shake your head. “I’ve only got a fifteen-minute break here, and I’m down to five. You gonna answer my question or not?” you ask him, picking up your mug again and smiling into it as you take a sip.
For a long moment, he only considers you, eyes searching. Then he sighs. “Uh, I guess… Look,” he says. “I ship out here in the next couple of weeks, and the thing is I don’t got a girl to write to unless you count my baby sister. Which I don’t.”
“I thought you were going out with a girl,” you remind him, furrowing your brows. “What was her name? Florence? Dolores?” As if you don’t remember exactly who it is.
“Dolores? You mean Dot?” he laughs. “We stopped going steady forever ago. Haven’t seen each other since we were kids.”
“If you’ll remember,” you say, “you and I haven’t really seen each other since we were kids, either.”
He draws his lower lip behind his teeth and nods. “That’s a fair point,” he says.
“Did you run out of girls to ask or something?” you tease, voice flat and brows raised.
“You wound me,” he says, laying his hand over his heart. Then, he leans in conspiratorially. “What’s the big deal? Do you still live with your folks?”
Unbelievable. With a defeated sigh and a half-smile you snatch up the notepad from the table and scribble your apartment’s address. “There. My address,” you tell him, tearing off the sheet of paper. “Don’t overuse it.”
Bucky looks the paper over once before gingerly folding it and putting it in his breast pocket. “Don’t think that’s a promise I can make,” he admits.
After only a couple of minutes and your polite farewells and wishes of good luck, he’s gone, and you’re back to where you started: in a break room with a cup of coffee, dreading the minute you’ve got to get back to work.
The next weeks are the same as ever they are, grating for their sameness. It’s complete drudgery to the point that your mind blanks out, and you almost forget what you agreed to until his first letter comes seemingly out of the blue. It comes to you on a Saturday when you have nothing better to do than sit down on your sofa and listen to the Count Basie Orchestra on the radio while you read all the news from overseas.
He writes:
21 August 1943
Heya Best Friend,
I’m writing from the training camp in jolly ol’ Aldbourne, England. I would say it’s a welcome change from Toccoa, except it turns out that jolly ol’ England ain’t all the jolly since it must be thirty degrees below freezing at all times. Turns out this is baseline when you get up this far in the Northern Hemisphere, even in the middle of August. Would’ve loved that interesting little tidbit before deploy, but, heck, they probably told me when I wasn’t paying attention.
They gave us a grand old welcome when we got here. Guess the idea is that the Americans are here to give the old Fuhrer his due. Not that we’ll be seeing European soil for a while yet. Still, these people have been pretty roughed up by the Krauts even all the way up here. Not Blitz-level, but the effects ripple. I guess they’re just happy to get a little bit of help. I don’t blame them a bit.
I hope we’re worth the effort they seem to think we are. We get up each morning at the crack of dawn to run six miles uphill and then load and unload our weapons about a thousand times (more like twenty, but still). It’s repetitive and monotonous as anything, but some of these guys ain’t half bad. They at least found out the best places to spend our free time—English pubs are every bit as fun as they say they are. With you being a lady and everything, I don’t think I probably ought to tell you everything that goes on.
If there was a more interesting coffee scene, maybe I could tell you about that, instead. Trouble is that Brits don’t know how to make a good cup of coffee, but they tell me that I don’t know how to make a good cup of tea. Even swap, so they say. Although, tea shops don’t have near the same atmosphere. All stuffy with pictures of the king everywhere. Have you ever seen a picture of His Royal Highness? He looks like he’s got a rubber face that melted all around the mouth. I’m telling you this because we’ve been warned against criticizing royalty in front of the locals, and I’ve got to get it off my chest somehow.
Well, I hope you’re doing well back home. Keep me updated on the goings on, and I’ll do the same. This first letter should give you a basic idea of what life is like over here. Apologies about it being so short, but this one is only the first of many. Scout’s honor.
Your friend,
James Bucky Barnes
P.S. If you see Steve around, tell him I said hello from me to you to him.
You’d be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t find it kinda charming in the way that only Bucky Barnes has always managed to be. Somehow, you can see a little bit of his expressions in what he writes, the way he raises his brows just so when he’s about to laugh or how he leans in like he’s telling a secret. You read it over a couple times just to latch onto the talking points and immediately head to your writing desk to start composing your response.
30 August 1943
Dear Bucky,
Thanks for your note. Glad to hear you made it that far up in the Northern Hemisphere safely. Sorry to hear it’s awfully cold and not all that jolly.
Well, what the heck are you supposed to say after that? It takes you a solid five minutes before you glance at the coffee forming a ring on your desk and smile. That’s the ticket.
I’m having a good, American cup of coffee right now. Just for you. If you can pick up any good tea-making tricks, bring them home for me, will you? I bet I could make as good a tea as any Brit, and I can do it without a rubber face hanging over me. (No disrespect to His Royal Highness.)
I wouldn’t go getting nostalgic for New York any time soon. It’s monotonous, too, don’t forget. Although, I guess it might be a little less strenuous. Six miles uphill? I’ll take my office chair any day, thanks. I even get to listen to Jack Benny replays when the work gets slow. (If it ever gets slow). Just now, I’ve got Count Basie on the radio. Does England have a taste for the finer things of life like comedy shows?
Nevermind about a short letter. I trust you’ll let me know all about the guys you meet and who you like and who gets on your nerves. I expect some truly fantastic characters to come out of your stories. Who knows? Maybe you’ll make friends of Winston Churchill, and then you’ll have to put up with the king’s face in more than just the tea shops. I’ve always wanted to travel to England, and I’m afraid your bleak picture painting hasn’t done anything to deter me. So when you do make friends of dear Winnie, be sure he extends me an invitation.
As for the goings on, there aren’t many (monotonous, tiresome New York for you). My mother and I are busy selling war bonds when we’re not working which is mostly just rallies, street corners, and church. In fact, our church asked mother to sing a little song to “get morale up.” I don’t think she realized that they were asking for something more along the lines of the Battle Hymn of the Republic rather than the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B which she sang on a Sunday morning with great enthusiasm and to the horror of the deacons. To this day (some weeks later) she is mortified, indignant, and insisting that the music director should’ve been more specific with his request.
We are all hurting for the boys overseas, wishing them each a swift and safe return. I will pray for you every evening until your next letter which I’m anticipating will give me much more information as to what I should pray for specifically.
You see? I can write short letters, too. Tell me stories and plenty of them!
Yours truly,
You sign your name with a flourish and read it over once before putting pen back to paper.
P.S. I haven’t seen Steve lately, but I’m sure he says hi right back. We miss you over here.
Your letter finished, you walk it down to the post office, send it off, and mostly forget about it. Yet, in the days following, you get a keener eye for things worth writing down. The humdrum of the rubber office and New York as a whole gets a little sharper in your eyes and in your mind as you consider how you might describe it to someone who won’t be able to see it again for many years yet. Additionally, you keep your ears open for any hint on how to get a hold of Steve Rogers. After all, if an enlisted man gives you a task to do, you’re going to do it, for Pete’s sake.
As of the moment, you haven’t told a soul about your little arrangement with Bucky, the better to shut out those voices that would tell you to get your old maid hooks into him and not let go. (Old maid, you have to laugh. An old maid because you weren’t married the moment you turned twenty. If that’s what they want to think.) Besides, as letters go, they’re a slow-moving thing. You’re well into September by the time you get Bucky’s next, reading:
9 September 1943
Heya,
What’s the big idea, getting me all jealous over a cup of coffee? Why, if you were a fella, I’d tell you right where you can stick that cup of coffee. Oh well. I guess if only one of us can enjoy Yankee pleasures, it might as well be you. It gives me little joy to congratulate you on your little Maxwell House cup, but I do so nonetheless.
The guys here in the 107th are just swell, but I think all of us are feeling the loss of the 506th who are still back in Toccoa training to jump out of planes. What can be done? We’re not paratroopers because we’re not crazy or even half as brave. I’ll tell you sometime about those guys, but now I’ve got to put up with Tim “Dum Dum” Dugan. Dum Dum is my bunkmate and he doesn’t snore so much as whistle in his sleep. I’m writing this now at midnight under the covers with a lamplight because I couldn’t catch a wink under these conditions.
Even so, the station here is a heck of a lot better than what we put up with at Toccoa. (God bless Guarnere and Liebgott who are still stuck back there. Paratroopers. Crazy.) I think back to those days and could almost laugh if Captain Sobel hadn’t been on everyone’s last nerve by the time I got the heck out of there. More than once, he revoked all of his company’s weekend passes because too many of them weren’t up to his exacting standards. Easy Company got fed a big spaghetti dinner before having to run a twelve-mile. Most miserable saps I ever saw in my life. I say if we’re gonna go fight tyrants in Germany, let’s take care of the ones on our side first. If it weren’t for Second Lt. Winters being such a decent guy, I would’ve popped him and taken the court-martialing with a smile. He’s not even my CO!
Well, enough about me. Hope you and yours are well. Thanks for that story about your mother! You got a decent chuckle out of me to the point where Dum Dum caught notice and had me read it to the division. Hope you don’t mind if we make her our patron saint. Somehow, it was like he heard the sweet, sweet song of our American angel all the way overseas. We’ll paint her name on the side of every vessel the army’s got if you’ll let us.
I can’t help it: I’m starving for news about New York. Heck, I’ll take a word about Connecticut or Oklahoma or Nebraska if you’ve got it. Still, I’d like to hear about you most of all. I can picture it better that way, I think. And speaking of pictures, would you mind sending me one of you? Guys here don’t believe you’ve got a girl to write to if you don’t have a picture of her, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to brag on you a bit. Besides, it would be nice to have something easier on the eyes to look at than Dum Dum’s ugly mug.
I’m afraid as far as comedy programs go, we don’t get Jack Benny over here. No ma’am, only Bob Hope is good enough for the AFRS. (That’s Armed Forces Radio Service, in case you didn’t know). I don’t know about England, but I’m a pretty big fan of Jack Benny myself. Don’t forget: Lucky Strike means fine tobacco.
Yours truly,
Bucky Barnes
P.S. It’s nice to be missed.