Man the Guns, the Howlers Are Coming [AO3 fic]
Steve Rodgers & Bucky Barnes, featuring the Howling Commandos, Peggy Carter and the terrible awful Dr Zola.
Summary: Bucky Barnes; Experiment to Commando. Steve Rodgers; dancing Monkey to Captain. Best Friends and a little more to the end of their first war.
Chapters: 26/? Words: 223576
PART 1 of series, featuring war photography and propaganda.
_________________________________________________
Bucky is sixteen and his best friend is about to die.
“You don’t gotta,” His voice cracks on the whisper, unable to finish, his useless hands clenching into fists. Steve heaves in a sudden rasping breath; pressing into the mattress as he shivers. He tapers off again, fading. He thinks briefly of the fun they were were having not two weeks ago; slipping and sliding across the pond in the park with no ice-skates. He thinks briefly of the snowball Steve had nailed into his face with spectacular accuracy. His laugh afterwards. “What the hell good’s winter if it kills you Steve?”
The Rodgers kid was always going to die one winter. Everyone said so, even Steve had known but Bucky---Bucky had thought they had more time. Thought Steve would at least get to graduate before falling off the scale and onto the stairs to take him above.
“You will warm up.” He orders, willing himself to become as hot as a furnace to combat Steve’s unnatural cold.
He presses his face against the back of Steve’s neck, lays his other arm over the hot water bottle to stop himself from shivering too. Steve grumbles, turning his head; and Bucky waits - but nothing - just the same frail rasps of air. He pushes a rough kiss against Steve’s hair instead, nothing like the soft but sincere kisses Sarah lays on him sometimes. If anything - if Steve was awake - it might even hurt.
This does not feel abnormal. Affection is hard-won and swallowed up in Steve - in movements if not words, no matter how much he forces on Steve - who pretends he doesn’t like it - when Bucky knows he does. A thick rain has picked up: he can hear it thundering against the small shuttered window. Something’s trying to come in.
He thinks: we are keeping Death away.
__________________________________________
LINK TO START HERE: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22226011/chapters/53068423
LINK TO NEW CHAPTER HERE: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22226011/chapters/64106620


















