Chapter 13
Their camp is deserted by the time Steve returns, save for Dernier shaving determinedly in front of a tin mirror, his kit propped up on the rolled up side of his tent. “Bonjour, mon Capitaine,” Dernier says, smiling lopsidedly at the tin mirror.
“Où est tout le monde?” Steve asks. He ducks under the flap of his own tent, even though he can see no one’s inside. They have three of the small walls to themselves, with Monty, Dernier and Dugan squeezing into the last. They’re roomier than the pup tents they were sharing in the field, big enough to set your kit out properly instead of going to sleep with it under your head, although only Steve and Morita can stand upright in them.
“They’ve gone to the,” Dernier says, but the rest of the sentence is lost to Steve’s incomplete French vocabulary.
“Soulagement?” Steve repeats.
Dernier frowns thoughtfully and says to himself, “Comment dites-vous? You know, the musical performance. The Americans are putting it on, over at the other camp.”
“You didn’t want to go?” Steve asks.
“Pah,” Dernier says, and rinses his face from the makeshift basin he’s made out of his helmet. “Why go see pretend women? Besides, English jokes aren’t as funny as French ones. Captaine, do you want to come with me to play poker tonight? My new friends in the Canadian camp, they have found cases and cases of the very best Cognac, that the Nazi bastards were keeping for themselves. I will teach you the French jokes.”
“Tempting,” Steve says, mostly to himself. He tugs off his muddy galoshes, to change them out for marginally drier boots. The galoshes were German, left behind in an abandoned shelter, picked up by Dugan while looting was still acceptable. He drops them on the floor of their tent, and then guiltily nudges them back up against the wall, where Bucky will line their boots up neatly anyway, each night before they go to sleep.
“Rogers,” Dernier says, and Steve flinches. “Ça va?”
“Fine,” he says, and then, “Jacques?”
Dernier tilts his head, waiting patiently for Steve to translate whatever it is he’s thinking about. He’s nicked himself just under the corner of his jaw, and stuck a bit of toilet tissue to the wound while it dries.
“You ever think of visiting America?” Steve asks, finally.
Dernier’s eyebrows climb towards his hairline, and fail to reach that high. “After the war?” he asks dubiously.
“Sure,” Steve says, and Dernier laughs.
“Maybe after the war, I will learn to think so far ahead,” he says.
The show’s already started by the time Steve finds a ride over to the other American encampment. It’s a narrow stage up on planks to keep it out of the mud, draped heavily with bunting. There are soldier-actors on stage as Steve squeezes in through the clustered groups of men to find his, waiting on line around the rough sketch of a barracks mess, trays in hand. One of them sidles up to the Cook but holds his tray close to his chest, peering down at the presumably empty pots. “Pardon,” he asks, in a genteel sort of voice. “Do you serve crabs here?”
“Oh, we serve anyone,” says the Cook, and pantomimes pouring a ladle full of slop onto the tray.
Dugan reaches over and thumps Steve on the back in greeting as Steve sits down. He gets a nod from Jim and Monty, a smile from Gabe, and no reaction at all from Bucky, who keeps his eyes on the show. “What the hell is this?” cries the Private, staring aghast down at his tray.
“It’s soup,” answers the Cook.
“What kind of soup?”
“Bean soup,” answers the Cook, this time with great dignity.
“I’m not asking what it’s been,” says the Private, “I’m asking what it is now!”
“These jokes have whiskers on ‘em,” Steve says, leaning into Bucky’s side. He feels the muscles in Bucky’s shoulder shiver. If it were just the two of them, Buck would have leaned away, would have said whatever he’s thinking that’s making his teeth grind together. In front of the others ...
“Get up on that stage yourself, you think you can do better,” Bucky says, so quiet it almost sounds like a threat. Steve shakes his head.
“Come on,” he says, “I’m only funny looking.”
That gets him a response, even if it’s just Bucky’s mouth twisting sideways. Steve nudges him again. Bucky lets him, lets Steve move him, listing sideways and back like a reed in the wind. The motion of it blends into the restless movements of the soldiers around them, the shuffling, burping, farting, laughing mass of them, all individuality lost to Steve’s astigmatism and officially discouraged, in any case. They’re far back enough that the stage blurs for Steve too: the yellow-brown bunting that he assumes is red-white-blue, the actors more shapes than anything else.
Look at the big picture, Phillips said.
“You think anyone’s come up with a Captain America bit yet?” Bucky asks.
Steve considers it: the seven of them in a can-can line up on stage, high stepping. They could put it in the next movie, show it in all the forty-eight states. Dugan watching everyone else instead of his feet; Dernier laughing fit to burst. Monty holding on to his dignity with the skin of his teeth.
“Look,” the Private says on stage, “I can’t eat this garbage, call your Sergeant.”
“It’s no use,” Cook says. “He won’t eat it either.”
“Buck, do you -” Steve says haltingly, and stares down at his chapped, reddened hands, wrapped around his knees. The ground is cold and damp under his ass even if the rest of him is warm, nestled deep in the body heat of the soldiers around them. He doesn’t even know what Bucky told the others. If he told them anything at all. On Bucky’s other side, Morita’s paying more attention to cleaning his nails with a pocket knife than to the show. Dugan and Monty are passing a bottle of what smells like brandy between them. Gabe seems halfway asleep. No one looks like they want to start a letter writing campaign. Steve licks his lips, and tries again. “Bucky, if you think we -”
“Don’t,” Bucky says. He shakes his head. He doesn’t look at Steve. He’s watching the actors up on stage making their bows. The applause is half-hearted, the energy subdued. Steve digs his face into the cradle of his elbows and watches the crowd. They’ve been away from home long enough that he doesn’t recognize all of the unit patches, the snatches of songs that he hears around the camp sometimes, always at a distance. These men will move out from Normandy in orderly lines like ants, towards Reims, Bastogne, Malmedy, Aachen, driving the Germans before them.
They look fresh, and Steve supposes they are. You need fresh troops to win a war. Sometimes it is only down to numbers.
The next act takes the stage: six fair maidens of varying splendor and body hair, with charming enough faces that Steve can believe someone on that stage knew their way around the makeup brushes. Gabe wakes up a little, and he and Bucky trade elbow jabs and smiles around Steve’s back. That had been how they’d met, whirling around the dance floor at the Hamilton Lodge Faggots Ball. Mabel May’s skill, of course, far exceeded that of the ladies of this chorus - one of which had forgotten to shave before showtime.
The other fellows in the artist outfit had put on a lot of shows at Pine Camp, back when Steve and Gabe were still in training. They’d usually been better outfitted than this one, with men darting down to New York City on furlough to pick up whatever sequins or satin they could get ahold of. Steve had heard of a whole network of skirts and dresses and padded brassieres being passed from base to base, all the way through the Pacific and back: nothing, apparently, lifted the spirits of the soldier quite like a Carmen Miranda costume.
Bucky smiles for the first time all night, watching the girls and their clumsy high kicks up on stage. He’d always liked the pansy balls, even though Steve had never known Bucky’s eye to catch on a skirt unless it was one of their kind wearing it. He’d moped for weeks when Rockland Palace had finally called it quits on the Faggots Ball, and refused to be comforted by the fêtes at Webster Hall.
Had it been the spectacle? Steve remembers asking, one night where Bucky had just sighed despondently at the idea of going out. The forbidden thrill of mixed race dancing? (A spiteful question; by that point Gabe and Bucky had long called it quits and become friends instead.) Bucky had shrugged, a little angrily - like he hadn’t known the answer himself, or like he could smell Steve’s lingering jealousy.
“They’ll never make one as big,” he’d said, and turned away.
Steve looks around, his nose still buried in his sleeves, his knees tucked up against his chest. Everyone around them is smiling too, big and genuine. There never had been anything quite as glorious as the Faggots Ball, which had been stuffed full of masculine women and feminine men (however to tell the rooster from the hen?) but also the opposite: the normal men and women, drawn by the glamor and drama, enchanted by the genius of artifice. They’d swelled the room, packed the hall full, and nearly brought down the house with their applause.
The applause in France is quieter, but sweet: when the girls make their way off the stage it’s to wolf whistles and blown kisses, as fervent as any given to the USO girls Steve remembers from back home. Bucky softens, enough that Steve risks leaning a little weight on him. His whole body shakes as Bucky claps.
Later, they undress in the dark. There are two cots in their tent, one against each wall, and they keep them apart for appearances. At night Bucky moves his cot flush against Steve’s and they fold into each other as best they can, piling up any clean clothes beneath them to try and pad out the wooden rods that run through the center of their makeshift bed. Each morning he moves it back as mindlessly as he does everything before he’s truly awake, which in Brooklyn was about his third cup of coffee and in Europe is right around never: that sleepy, far away-ness banished only when someone is shooting at them, or when his eyes are shadowed by Captain America’s cowl. Or now, Steve supposes; Bucky could be wearing any expression at all.
He waits, shivering in his clothes, while Bucky tidies up. He listens. The heels of Steve’s galoshes click together as they’re set against the wall. The soft rustle of clothes being folded and laid on top of Steve’s pack. The creak of the cot as Bucky settles into it, rolling Steve nearly on top of himself almost by accident as his weight shifts their center of gravity.
He’s bare chested. Steve threads his fingers through the hair that covers Bucky’s chest. Bucky’s hands go around his waist, nudge up under his clothes to find skin to rub warmth into. He smells of cigarettes and campfire smoke, and underneath that the faint smell of shaving soap. Steve butts his head up against Bucky’s jaw and rubs like a cat, feeling the scratch of beard against his skin. He traces the jut of ribs and muscle, the width of Bucky’s shoulders.
“So what would you do?” he asks. His hands are on Bucky’s face, thumb rubbing over the prickly hair, looking for the familiar dip in his chin.
“What?” Bucky asks. He sounds half asleep already, drugged.
“What would you do?” Steve says again. His voice is half a rumble, pitched low even though their tent is surrounded already by snoring, like the sound of waves.
“Go to sleep,” Bucky breathes, brushing his lips against Steve’s forehead. Steve waits, and after a moment Bucky relents. He sighs, lifting Steve high enough that the blanket slips down their shoulders. Cold air on the back of his neck. He says, “I think I’d travel.”
He says, “Only places I’ve ever been in my life are New York, Army bases, and here. Been carrying that damn flag on my chest for almost a year now and I’ve hardly even seen the place.”
His arms tighten around Steve. He says, quieter, “They probably pay Captain America enough, we could do that for a while. See where the trains take us.”
Steve’s eyelashes brush against the skin of Bucky’s throat. “Oh,” he says. “I’m going with you?”
“Sure,” Bucky says. There’s a tremble in his arms. “You ain’t been anywhere either. Only time you went west of the Hudson was -”
“ - lying to the Army recruiters in Jersey,” Steve says.
He feels Bucky laugh, more than he can actually hear it: as a shudder, quickly gone. “Yeah,” Bucky says. “Yeah, you crazy bastard. But don’t worry. You’ll like it. We’ll see everything great the country’s got to offer.”
“Yeah?” Steve asks, and lifts his head a little, enough that he can look towards the wet shine of Bucky’s eyes, colorless in the dark. “What’re we gonna do with the rest of the afternoon?”
Bucky’s arms tighten. His lips are hot against Steve’s, hard over the square shape of his teeth, wet where they fumble in the dark, kissing each other’s cheeks and noses by accident. He’s cradled between Bucky’s legs, pinned by his arms. If they were at home - if they were in a bed - Bucky would roll both of them over and strip Steve mercilessly out of his clothes, pretending he didn’t know laying flat was easier on Steve’s crooked spine.
They make do. They take off only the necessary clothes, which are bundled underneath their bodies for more padding on the cot. They go slow - to keep quiet, keep the cot from tipping over, and keep the wool blanket off Steve’s bare ass, which will give him hives. Bucky plants his feet up on the cot, his broad hands restless over Steve’s back until the way is eased and they’re fucking smoothly, deeply. Mostly Steve holds on: to Bucky’s hair, his face, one hand slipping down through the hole at the corner of the cot. His dick trapped between their bellies, rubbing, slick with sweat and heat. His knees pressing against their balled-up uniforms. His thighs spread wide and bruising over Bucky’s hips.
For a long time after Bucky holds on. His mouth is open against the nape of Steve’s neck. His breath is hot against Steve’s skin. Steve lets him do it, sinks body deep. Listens to the steady rise and fall of Bucky’s lungs and heart, nestled between Steve and the cold canvas of the cot. For once his own heartbeat matches, keeping the rhythm like a good soldier on the march. The sudden cessation of pain is like a drug, like a dream, like he’s been dropped in the body of a stranger. Sex is an astonishment: a few minutes where all Steve feels is good.
He drifts, but he doesn’t dream. He smells the old, sour smell of their blankets, the funk of sex. He feels the callouses on Bucky’s hands, and the ache underneath his left shoulder blade. Bucky’s throat makes clicking noises as he swallows, and his joints click too as he folds himself more tightly around Steve. The sound of snoring soldiers remains just that.
“You okay?” Bucky asks, hushed.
“No,” Steve says, confused, and then, “Yeah. Yeah, Buck. I’m okay.”
-
“Cap? Cap, are you awake?”
Steve’s fingers twitch. His arm is numb where it’s lying across two wooden bars, reaching over towards the other empty cot. The blanket is pulled high around his shoulders. There’s cold air leaking in under it. His eyes open, blink, find the huddled shape of Bucky Barnes, crouched in the corner of their tent.
The crinkle of his bare feet on the tarp underneath them. The canvas flap whispers as it’s folded back. More cold air. “Yeah, we’re - Gabe, what’s -”
“It’s Peggy, she’s found -”
And a hand on Steve’s shoulder, shaking him roughly.
“You need to come now.”
-
“Two weeks ago, I received information of a convoy of prisoners diverted to an unknown Hydra camp in Austria,” Peggy says. Her hair is pulled tightly back from her face. Her lips are no color in particular. She’s grimy with travel.
“There’s lots of camps,” Dugan says. He rubs both hands over his face, emerging with mustache rumpled. Morita’s cheeks are red with pillow lines. “What’s so special about this one?”
Phillips’ uniform is hastily buttoned. The creases are still in it from how he hangs his blouse up at night. There’s a stack of photographs in front of him, dropped hastily on the desk and not tidied up. It’s early enough that they’ve lit the gas lamps, which hiss quietly in the corner of Phillips’ big tent.
“My source is... looking to curry favor,” Peggy says. “This base is quite secret. The location is very remote. Aerial surveillance of the area turns up nothing. I don’t know that we would have found the place otherwise.”
They wait. On Steve’s right, Gabe sits tense and silent. Peggy’s too disciplined to have told him anything about what she’s found, but the look in her eyes …
She tells them, “My source turned over documents - requests for prisoners to be sent to this particular camp. They reference personnel we thought disappeared in ‘43.”
Steve’s head jerks up. “Arnim Zola,” he says, and next to him Bucky flinches. Peggy nods.
“The SSR raided the camp last week,” she says. “It seems Dr. Zola has been busy continuing Hydra’s efforts to replicate Doctor Erskine’s formula. At this site and potentially others.”
“Did he - did he succeed?” Bucky asks. Steve looks over at him, but Bucky’s staring straight ahead. He looks focused, ready. Jaw set. Like his voice hadn’t trembled when he spoke.
“We don’t know,” Peggy says, and sighs. “As far as the SSR is aware, you are our only survivor of his experiments, Sergeant Barnes.”
Bucky reaches for the photographs and turns them over. The stack is close enough that Steve can see what Bucky’s looking at, the grainy black and white. The stark lines of a wrought iron gate, the Nazi eagle on top, the Hydra squid flanking it. The operating table, smashed glass and overturned cabinets around it, as if they’d been caught in the middle of destroying the evidence. Soldiers standing in front of a long, deep trench. There’s dirt piled high behind them, clumpy with snow. In the trench, also dusted with snow, are skinny, bleached limbs. Trunks bare of branches. A hand outstretched.
Gabe sucks in a breath. Bucky hands the photographs to Steve. The weight of eyes on Steve’s shoulders as the rest of their unit waits their turn to see and witness. Steve straightens his spine along the rigid back of the chair. “What do you need us to do?”
“Our men are standing guard over the camp,” Peggy says. “We sealed the site immediately once we understood what we were looking at.”
“Coordination with the Russians has opened up a train route through the Alps,” Phillips says, “but it should go without saying that they can’t be allowed to get their hands on any of Zola’s work. Anything that looks important or that you recognize,” - this he says directly to Bucky - “should be catalogued and brought back directly to the SSR for transport to London. I’d like Stark to take a look at it.”
Bucky’s still staring at the photographs, which have made their way to Gabe’s hands. A muscle in his jaw jumps. “If he managed it,” Bucky says, and then nothing else. A muscle in his jaw jumps.
“That’s what we need to know, Sergeant,” Phillips says. “Or if he’s gotten any closer than our men have. Lives depend on it.”
Bucky shakes himself, and raises his head to meet Phillips’ eyes. “Yessir,” he says.
But he catches Steve’s arm as they’re leaving Phillips’ tent and tows him in the opposite direction of their campsite, almost too fast for Steve to keep pace. His grip on Steve’s bicep is relentless, painful - relinquished only when Steve yanks hard enough Bucky actually notices.
“What’s,” he starts to say: what’s the matter with you, but stops at the look on Bucky’s face. It’s creeping towards dawn, and the round whites of Bucky’s eyes shine in the gray gloomy light. “What is it, Buck?” he says, and puts a hand on Bucky’s wrist even though there are soldiers around who might see them. He’s trembling.
“Steve,” Bucky says. “Steve, there’s something -”
“What?” Steve asks, bewildered. He watches that muscle jump in Bucky’s jaw. “I didn’t have anything to do with this, Buck. I thought we were getting leave too. You want me to say sorry? Look, when we’re back from Austria I’ll talk to Phillips, see if they - if they still want to send us home. Alright?”
Bucky laughs, and rubs a hand over his mouth. Stays like that for a second, his eyes shut tight, hand pressing hard over his face. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, alright.”