Fic: Adjustments (1/5)
Jun. 23rd, 2012 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leashy_bebesTitle: Adjustments (1/5)
Fandom: Avengers/Captain America movie
Pairing: Very vague hints at Bucky/Steve so far
Rating: PG
Summary: Bucky doesn't get homesick for a good while after he joins the army.
Notes: This is the first of 5 fills for prompts on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hc_bingo. The prompt this time was homesickness. Thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eldee for the beta. Also, Bucky's childhood comes from nowhere but my own imagination.
Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, just playing. Owes a debt to the Whiskeytown song 'Houses on the Hill' and the line he kept her picture in the pocket that was closest to his heart and when he hit shore, must have been a target for the gunmen. That's not mine either.
Word Count: ~800
Bucky settles into the military pretty quick. The routine's kind of refreshing really, after the mixed chaos of his adult life and his childhood since his mom died. The training is about what he expected, and all the newest recruits are kept busy – deliberately, Bucky guesses, because when the call comes for lights out, all they want is sleep.
His first proper day with the 107th, Bucky meets a kid who reminds him of Steve. Jackie Nelson from Michigan isn't small like Steve – quite the opposite, in fact. Bucky had tried hard to hide his relief at Steve's string of 4-Fs, and he feels the same way about Jackie, who's almost certainly lied about his age to enlist. This isn't the place for either of them.
When Bucky was younger, he tried and failed to protect his mom from his dad's total inability to hold down a job. After she died, he tried to protect Steve from the whole world. And now, he resolves to protect Jackie from the war, as much as he possibly can. The 107th all have each other's backs, but it feels good to have someone specific to look out for.
It doesn't hit Bucky until they leave for Europe that he is going very far from home. That he might never see Brooklyn again, might never catch a movie with Steve or sneak into a ball game. He knows other men feel the same, and have felt it the whole time. Jackie has a copper penny flattened from being left on the train tracks, and he holds it between his palms when he says his prayers. Other men have stuff too. There's fellas with pictures, with letters, with locks of hair tied in little ribbons. Bucky doesn't need much because he's never had much, and when he sees how the others look at their doo-dads, he can't help but be glad. They always look conflicted, like memory and homesickness have collided and left them reeling.
Home's always been a fluid kind of thing for Bucky, maybe because they moved around so much when he was a kid, desperate to keep one step ahead of landlords. Maybe because he always felt most at home in places he never lived. Hawking newspapers near the Williamsburg Bridge, sharing blankets with Steve in the warmth of Steve's mom's bed after she left for work. Home has never really been tangible enough for him to carry a part of it with him.
Bucky has his mom's wedding ring strung on his dogtags, and that's about it. Well, no. Not quite. Nobody realised Steve could draw until they were teenagers, and when he got a little more confident in his skills, he drew this picture of Bucky's mom from what little they both remember of her. Bucky made him sign it, and he keeps it, her face and his name, in the pocket closest to his heart.
He doesn't find the other picture until the 107th's third day in Europe. How the hell Steve managed to get the scrap of paper into the lining of Bucky's kitbag like that, Bucky will never know. It's a quick sketch, just lines and a little shading, showing the Stark Expo stage. There's the (briefly) floating car, the dancing girls, Stark with his arms outstretched, owning the damn world. On the back, Steve has scribbled 'see you at the next one', and as soon as Bucky sees those words, it hits.
So this is what homesickness feels like, he realises. It's this, this sick clenching in your stomach, in your throat. He feels like he could stagger, like he wants to reel away into a corner and curl up small enough to get himself under control, but there's no time for that. There's no time for much of anything in wartime but that doesn't mean that niggling feeling goes away.
No, if anything it settles in, becomes just another part of him. It worms its way inside so that it's not just trenches and rats and sniper fire and crappy rations and dumbasses up the chain of command, it's all of that, and this creeping, constant homesickness. Bucky feels like he could deal happily with one or the other, but both? Both seems cruel. It hits him at the weirdest times, a wash of sickness and something like sharp-edged boredom. Normally he thinks goddamn, I miss Steve. Not that he wants Steve there (that is the last thing he wants), he just misses him. Misses New York and taking girls dancing. Misses Steve's smart mouth, misses hauling his dumb ass out of trouble. (Misses his smile and his eyes, and the way his fingers curl to hold a pencil and how his shoulders fit just so under Bucky's arm.)
Part 2
Or read here @ ao3
Fandom: Avengers/Captain America movie
Pairing: Very vague hints at Bucky/Steve so far
Rating: PG
Summary: Bucky doesn't get homesick for a good while after he joins the army.
Notes: This is the first of 5 fills for prompts on
hc_bingo. The prompt this time was homesickness. Thanks to eldee for the beta. Also, Bucky's childhood comes from nowhere but my own imagination.Disclaimer: Characters are not mine, just playing. Owes a debt to the Whiskeytown song 'Houses on the Hill' and the line he kept her picture in the pocket that was closest to his heart and when he hit shore, must have been a target for the gunmen. That's not mine either.
Word Count: ~800
Bucky settles into the military pretty quick. The routine's kind of refreshing really, after the mixed chaos of his adult life and his childhood since his mom died. The training is about what he expected, and all the newest recruits are kept busy – deliberately, Bucky guesses, because when the call comes for lights out, all they want is sleep.
His first proper day with the 107th, Bucky meets a kid who reminds him of Steve. Jackie Nelson from Michigan isn't small like Steve – quite the opposite, in fact. Bucky had tried hard to hide his relief at Steve's string of 4-Fs, and he feels the same way about Jackie, who's almost certainly lied about his age to enlist. This isn't the place for either of them.
When Bucky was younger, he tried and failed to protect his mom from his dad's total inability to hold down a job. After she died, he tried to protect Steve from the whole world. And now, he resolves to protect Jackie from the war, as much as he possibly can. The 107th all have each other's backs, but it feels good to have someone specific to look out for.
It doesn't hit Bucky until they leave for Europe that he is going very far from home. That he might never see Brooklyn again, might never catch a movie with Steve or sneak into a ball game. He knows other men feel the same, and have felt it the whole time. Jackie has a copper penny flattened from being left on the train tracks, and he holds it between his palms when he says his prayers. Other men have stuff too. There's fellas with pictures, with letters, with locks of hair tied in little ribbons. Bucky doesn't need much because he's never had much, and when he sees how the others look at their doo-dads, he can't help but be glad. They always look conflicted, like memory and homesickness have collided and left them reeling.
Home's always been a fluid kind of thing for Bucky, maybe because they moved around so much when he was a kid, desperate to keep one step ahead of landlords. Maybe because he always felt most at home in places he never lived. Hawking newspapers near the Williamsburg Bridge, sharing blankets with Steve in the warmth of Steve's mom's bed after she left for work. Home has never really been tangible enough for him to carry a part of it with him.
Bucky has his mom's wedding ring strung on his dogtags, and that's about it. Well, no. Not quite. Nobody realised Steve could draw until they were teenagers, and when he got a little more confident in his skills, he drew this picture of Bucky's mom from what little they both remember of her. Bucky made him sign it, and he keeps it, her face and his name, in the pocket closest to his heart.
He doesn't find the other picture until the 107th's third day in Europe. How the hell Steve managed to get the scrap of paper into the lining of Bucky's kitbag like that, Bucky will never know. It's a quick sketch, just lines and a little shading, showing the Stark Expo stage. There's the (briefly) floating car, the dancing girls, Stark with his arms outstretched, owning the damn world. On the back, Steve has scribbled 'see you at the next one', and as soon as Bucky sees those words, it hits.
So this is what homesickness feels like, he realises. It's this, this sick clenching in your stomach, in your throat. He feels like he could stagger, like he wants to reel away into a corner and curl up small enough to get himself under control, but there's no time for that. There's no time for much of anything in wartime but that doesn't mean that niggling feeling goes away.
No, if anything it settles in, becomes just another part of him. It worms its way inside so that it's not just trenches and rats and sniper fire and crappy rations and dumbasses up the chain of command, it's all of that, and this creeping, constant homesickness. Bucky feels like he could deal happily with one or the other, but both? Both seems cruel. It hits him at the weirdest times, a wash of sickness and something like sharp-edged boredom. Normally he thinks goddamn, I miss Steve. Not that he wants Steve there (that is the last thing he wants), he just misses him. Misses New York and taking girls dancing. Misses Steve's smart mouth, misses hauling his dumb ass out of trouble. (Misses his smile and his eyes, and the way his fingers curl to hold a pencil and how his shoulders fit just so under Bucky's arm.)
Part 2
Or read here @ ao3