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“Bloody fucking piece of shit map,” Monty slaps the sodden papers to the ground beside him. They land with a sound like mud hitting a windshield. “I can't use this; it's illegible. Sodding hell boys, all that fancy technology and Hydra can't even wax a damned map?”
Gabe blinks at him, big mock-bewildered eyes lit bright by their little campfire. “Damn, Major. I didn't know you knew that many unprofessional words.”
Monty throws him a good-natured look of incredulity, ready to quip about the ‘moral of Her Majesty's soldiers being tainted by all you Americans’. But his insufferable Sargeant opens his mouth first.
“Shit, Monty, you should really watch your language. For fucks sake, there are kids here.” He gestures widely to the goats lying about the farmyard they'd made camp of. Jimmy gets a laugh out of Gabe, but Monty refuses to dignify such a poor joke with a reaction.
And once he hears the story, Cap’s gaspy guffaws are enough to egg him on all night.
“Fucking fuck. Damn this mud to hell,” Dugan grumbles, hopping wildly to rip the rain-and-mud slicked boot off his foot.
“Jesus, watch your mouth DumDum. Do you think about the shit that comes outta your dumb face?”
Dugan waves the damaged shoe at his friend, it’s disconnected sole clapping in emphasis. “I'll say whatever the hell I want, Jimmy Boy. It's my mouth, and I let it do as it damn well pleases.”
Jimmy snickers. “Your mouth is as filthy as those boots of yours, and just as loose.”
Dugan lobs the grimy boot at sarge, but the bastard catches it. He catches it and saunters off with a wave, squelching through the deepest mud in camp. Dugan's boot is tucked under his arm, smearing sticky English soil over rich blue wool.
The solid sound the other boot makes against the back of Jimmy's head is worth the mud permanently caked into Dugan's socks.
“Goddamn, Rogers. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“Kissed yours too, Buck.” The sly humored look on his face makes Bucky wanna kick him.
“Now now, mind your language Sargent,” Agent Carter chides, marching up behind him in the mess tent. “An educated soldier like yourself can do much better than that poor excuse for a vocabulary.”
“My apologies, Agent. I'll think of something more elaborate next time,” he tells her, face churlish.
Carter nods a single crisp bob, a smile pulling at her bright lips. “See that you do, my grandmother could do better. That was positively shameful.” Bucky salutes her, two fingers slicing the air, and turns back to his rations under the laughing eyes of his brothers.
“«Burn in hell, Hydra bastards!»” Dernier is almost gleeful, lobbing one of his homemade contraptions out in front of the oncoming convoy.
Jones snorts.
“«Such disgraceful words. What would your mother think of you, Jacque?»”
Jones can’t bite back the cackling Dernier's filthy response pulls from within him.
“Language, Barnes. Goddamn,” Monty snickers at the same time as Jim calls “watch your fucking mouth, Sarge!” from the back of their formation.
He shows them all his teeth, and both his favorite fingers.
They stop long enough for Dugan’s face to return from purple to something more closely resembling a man who breathes like a functional human being.
Steve loses himself in the familiarity of the moment; comrades at his back, motorbike between his knees tearing over snowy woodland. The thock thock of his shield. Even the explosions showering him with icy sod is welcome and familiar. Hydra has traded their monstrous tanks for humvees and jeeps, but the deadly blue glow of the light cannons is the same. Their thugs still throw themselves into battle with a fearlessness born of empty promises.
Even Iron Man’s repulsors sing like gunfire in the distance.
Steve rides the high of nostalgia happily. It makes a space of contrasting peace in his mind where his team laughs despite the threat of death, jeering at each other with a heavy air of brotherhood.
Feedback whines in his earpiece, shrill and unpleasant. “Shit!” Tony spits over the noise.
“Language,” Steve scolds immediately, regretting the joke the instant it’s free. “JARVIS, what's the view from upstairs?” Calling on the AI is poor cover for his slip up, but it's not like his Avengers would recognize the quip for what it was.
“The central building is protected by some kind of energy shield,” JARVIS deadpans. “Strucker’s technology is well beyond any other Hydra base we’ve taken.”
Thankfully everyone else seems happy to diffuse into friendly banter. But Tony, because he’s Tony goddamn Stark and can’t let anything go if he doesn't have the upper hand, has to bring it up again. “Wait a second, no one else is gonna deal with the fact that Cap just said language?”
“I know," Steve sighs. "It just slipped out.”