Troll-hunting with the Howling Commandos
Steve has good hunches about people, but especially in cases like assembling your own team, it’s important to back up those hunches with evidence.
“Who are the guys I want?” he’d asked Bucky on the long walk back to camp.
“What, you’re saying you need guys?” Bucky had smiled, but it was a tentative smile, a what the hell is our dynamic now? smile, an I need to know you still need me remark.
“You know them, you’ve fought with them and I trust you,” Steve said.
Bucky, who still looked sallow and shaken even as he marched, scanned the column of men. “Hmm.”
Which is how, once they’re back in London, Steve winds up asking Falsworth what it was like growing up alongside the royal family (Falsworth blinks politely and demurs that he’s only country nobility), why he tries to get the story straight about Morita’s pirate radio capabilities (Morita has not yet hijacked an Axis Sally broadcast, though he has ideas) and how he stumbles into promising a field test of Dugan’s highest-count drinking night (beers and bar fights both eligible).
“Jones I like,” Steve says as they’re turning down for the evening. Bucky is looking better, more like himself, though he still seems a bit rough around the edges, brittle and unkempt like he never was in Brooklyn.
“Gabe is great,” he says, tugging off one boot. “He went to college. We stayed close in Italy.”
Steve’s eyebrows go up. “Because he went to college?”
“Because he reminds me of you,” Bucky says, unlacing the other. Steve only has a moment to absorb that, before Bucky’s mouth quirks. “He’s lousy at cards.”
He laughs, and Bucky stretches out on his creaking mattress. He’s still smiling to himself, though, and Steve takes his word for it.