Shortly after Steve rescued the 400 prisoners Bucky learned how joining the army changed Steve.
“You let a scientist experiment on you?!” Bucky yelled.
“Yeah but it worked—“ Steve tried to explain.
“What happened to not doing anything stupid you dumbass?” Bucky asked.
“Yes I let myself get experimented on, but nothing bad has happened or gone wrong,” Steve reasoned.
“For now. There are going to be long term effects of this you know,” Bucky shot back. “Why’d they even pick you for this?”
“Gee thanks for the support,” Steve said sarcastically.
“Happy you got huge and don’t have health problems and shit but no offense weren’t there other candidates who were already…” Bucky trailed off.
“What, healthy? Not already lucky to be alive? There were but Dr. Erskine chose me for some reason,” Steve told him.
Bucky would have left it alone after that but there was something about the way Steve said it that made it seem like something was left out. But he didn’t question Steve any further.
What he did was ask someone else who might know. Howard stark. Bucky had learned that Stark also played a large role in turning Steve into a super soldier. It took a while for the opportunity to present itself but it did when Howard was asking him about his rifle.
“What was it about Steve that made Erskine choose him as a lab rat?” Bucky asked Howard.
“Erskine said that the serum makes good better and bad worse, so he chose a good man,” Howard explained.
“I’m sure there are a lot of good people though, what was it about Steve?” Bucky asked him.
“Jealous?” Howard smirked at him.
“No I wouldn’t want anything I don’t understand circling around my body. Just curious. There are a lot of good people he could’ve chosen from,” Bucky said.
“I wasn’t there but I heard about it from Agent Carter, General Philips threw a fake grenade at a bunch of guys when they were doing PT Steve was one of them. The one who jumped on it first was Steve. He got chosen because of how willing he was to save others, and not just follow orders,” Howard responded.
“He jumped on top of a grenade?” Bucky asked. Howard just nodded. Bucky immediately set out to find Steve.
When he found him he was walking with the newly formed howling commandos.
“Hey we were just looking for you,” Steve called out.
When they got closer Bucky smacked him.
“What was that for?” Steve asked rubbing the back of his head where Bucky had hit him.
“For jumping on top of a grenade! Even if it was a fake you don’t jump on top of anything that’ll kill you!”
“Who told you?” Steve questioned.
“Doesn’t matter. But first you try to enlist multiple times, while lying on those enlistment forms, second you actually join the army, despite the dangers you would’ve been in just for having asthma let alone everything else, third you jumped on top of a grenade and let people use you as a lab rat. And finally you went on what everyone told you was a suicide mission! You weren’t supposed to do anything stupid until I got back, and look what you did,” Bucky ranted.
“If I didn’t do all of that you’d probably be dead right now,” Steve reasoned.
“You’re still a punk even if you saved my life.”
“Alright but you’re a jerk because I don’t think you ever thanked me for saving you.”
Bucky just rolled his eyes. Maybe it was a good thing that Steve got the serum. If anyone could’ve avoided becoming corrupted because of the serum it was Steve Rogers.