it's you and me up against the world, it's you and me

[dysmorphics]

 

 

 

 

I don't need a parachute, baby if I've got you
Baby if I've got you, I don't need a parachute
You're gonna catch me,
You're gonna catch if I fall
( 🎶 )

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[hadagreatpast]

"Hey, no matter what happens, nobody's gonna go poking and prodding at you, you got that?" Bucky would shoot his so-called friends himself if he had to when it came to protecting Steph. "But we'll have to figure something out, cause they've been seeing your face for years now."

Bucky pressed her tags back into her hand before pulling out the pocket watch she'd gotten a quick glimpse of earlier. He flicked it open and handed it to her, letting Steph really take a look at the photo of her--happy and amused at something Becca had said to her off camera--tucked inside the cover. "I've got another photo of you on my desk at the office, too." So they knew her face, just not as well as he and his family did. And especially with the larger picture on his desk, it was easier to tell she was supposed to be small and skinny, not tall and curvy.

While she looked at the pocket watch, Bucky grinned slightly. "You outranking me isn't the surprising part, sweetheart. I usually ended up letting you boss me around anyway." Did Bucky mean to call her sweetheart just then? No, he did not. But he wasn't going to take it back, either.

[dysmorphics]

"We can trust Pegs, and Howard, but I ain't sure how things work now that the war's over." Steph worried for Bucky, too; they never did find out just how the serum affected him. She had hoped to talk to the Wakandans about it at some point, but she'd ended up spending nearly all of her time with him whenever she visited. She would let Howard run some tests on them both for their peace of mind, but not until they were sure that wouldn't reach anyone else. Even if they'd destroyed all that they knew of HYDRA by now, she didn't want to take any chances. There could still be other moles and sleeper agents.

She touched her fingertips to her picture in his pocket watch. "I don't remember ever being this happy since you told me you enlisted." She'd been so mad at him that she wouldn't speak to him for a whole day, then she was morose and moody in all those weeks after that. She understood doing one's duty, but why did he have to leave? Why did he have to leave her? It wasn't fair.

If she'd known then that he loved her too, she would've begged him to run away with her. She instead tried for the next best thing: that if he must die, then at least they could die together.

She glanced back at him in surprise, expecting him to take back the endearment. When he didn't, she felt her stomach twist — in a good way — and she had to grin. "Too bad we were so dumb. I could've given you a proper dressing down while we made our way through Europe. What a wasted opportunity." Did he catch the innuendo? She'd never really flirted before.

[hadagreatpast]

"Yeah, guess I wasn't exactly someone that could call some shots with them after your war, was I?" Not if he was off being a POW with a missing arm. "But we'll be careful about what we tell people, and who we tell it to, alright?"

Oh. That was right. Oops. "Yeah, I sorta lied about that," Bucky started with a frown. "I didn't enlist. I was trying to stay here in the city with you, and had even uh... convinced myself I needed to actually tell you how I felt, but then I got my draft letter and decided to wait and tell you when I got home." It would give him a reason to make it home, after all.

Bucky looked down at the picture in his watch. He didn't have to see it, he had every single part of it burned into his mind, and he had for a long time. "I don't remember what she said, but Becca said something you thought was funny. Then I took your photo." And while he had many photos of Steph, that one was one of his favorites. It's why he took it with him.

"I don't know if it woulda been better or worse if you had been over there with me," Bucky said, grinning as he looked back up at Steph. "I mighta gotten distracted with the dressing downs, or with just wanting to protect you. But I would have at least been with you instead of half a world away."

[dysmorphics]

"You were drafted?" That was news to Steph. All this time, she'd believed Bucky had chosen to go off to war on his own accord.

But that also had a new implication: "You could've gone home. After Azzano, they offered you and the others an honorable discharge." At Steph's insistence, actually. She'd strong-armed Colonel Phillips into convincing top brass to send their captured boys home in exchange for her going into service, since she was worth a hundred men in battle anyway. "You didn't take it. You said I needed a second-in-command and you didn't trust anyone else to watch my back." The gesture had moved her, and she'd selfishly accepted, because she had been so afraid. But to now realize that he'd stuck around because of her, which then led to the train and all the tragedy that followed...

She suddenly grabbed him in a fierce hug, mumbling into his hair, "You absolute moron," with a sob. He wasn't the Bucky who made that choice, that was true, but she knew now that he would've done the same. That, and to keep his being drafted from her was such a dumb move. "We could've gotten married and run far away. Lived in a farm on the mountains and tended to goats or something." People made such a big deal about how honorable and heroic it was to be a soldier, but having been there, they knew of war's true horrors and now had to live with what's left of themselves after it had destroyed them both.