so since i talked about 616 style bucky and pre-serum steve with mcu sensibilities -- for the record, if i was gonna write it, i'd write it like this
alright, so, take what you know. throw it in a bag. toss it around a little. it comes out about the same, mostly, maybe just a little bit tilted slightly to the left or, it happens a little like this:
at the not so tender age of twenty years old, scrappy, fight-prone always getting into fights pre-serum steve gets selected by erskine for the super soldier program after steve wanders off from a double date night out with arnie roth (arnie walks both girls home after because all they really cared for was a fun night dancing and when he can't find steve anywhere and he checked all the goddamn alleyways, he takes a train up to harlem to see his fella because, well, why not, but -- this is not the point of this story).
steve goes to camp lehigh to train, where he meets the camp's resident army brat, a sixteen year old bucky barnes who is full of vim and vigor with a chip on his shoulder the size of new jersey. bucky barnes, the orphan, bucky barnes, the kid who knows better than every goddamn hapless army recruit who waltzes in and out of lehigh and he knows it and they know it and everyone hates him for it, so he keeps getting into fights, keeps letting himself get drawn into it bc he's always had something to prove, although damn if he knows exactly what. bucky barnes, who keeps trying to run off and find a recruitment center that will swallow his lies, pretend he's eighteen, but he doesn't have enough money to get very far and as far as he can get, they already know to watch out for him.
the meet-up is, naturally, over a fight. two small, scrappy stubborn assholes and i could tell you who waded into the fight first but it wouldn't matter, really, six to one half dozen of the other.
they take to each other like a house on fire. steve tells bucky about the five tries. bucky tells steve about always running away to try and enlist. steve cracks, "maybe they oughta choose you for this program."
it's funny at the time. it won't be, later.
bucky teases steve for the stars in his eyes whenever peggy's around and swallows around the lump in his throat, telling himself it's good enough, this strange burgeoning beautiful friendship that he has with this slight, scrappy idiot. steve gets through training with maybe a little bit of help and advice from bucky, who knows all the ropes and is already the best shot colonel philips has ever seen.
they separate, now. steve, off to brooklyn, off to the lab and the shield and a body that is much more than he ever could've bargained for and then later, after blood and fire and near-drowning, off to the war bonds tour.
they keep in touch. they send letters. steve's war bonds tour lasts a little longer than it would've or it should've. bucky joins the war the second he turns 18 and doesn't turn back. colonel philips sees to it that bucky gets rushed through the process, there's no point in pretending that bucky is a new recruit and he gets placed within the 107th, a unit sniper.
when steve gets the letter, he wonders at the coincidence. did he ever tell bucky about the 107th or is this just another strange stroke of fate tying them together?
(it wouldn't be the last, not by far but -- that comes later)
and then, azzano. and then, "i thought you were smaller." and then, the howling commandos.
"are you ready to follow captain america into the jaws of death?" "nah, i'd pass but scrappy little jerks gotta stick together, right?"
bucky is not officially the co-lead of the commandos, not really, because it looks weird, doesn't it, that the two people leading this team are so much younger than its other members, jim and gabe and dum dum and dernier and monty, fond and exasperated, playing the role of soldier in arms and grumpy older brother both to cap and bucky (mostly bucky, because he got so fucking angry with them when they did it and it was funny as hell to see him turn bright red about it) but damn proud of them anyways.
it should've been one of us, dugan says, after. i always thought it would've been one of us.
and that's it, that's the end
(it's not the end, obviously)
