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The first time Steve sees James Buchanan Barnes is when Bucky is chewing a candy cigarette in church, letting it poke through the gap where one of this front teeth should be.
“Hey,” the boy whispers, and the air whistles between his teeth. “Hey!” He whispers more insistently, and Pastor Tomlins gives him a dirty look. Steve blushes and shrinks down in the pew, not looking up at his mom or dad.
“Hey kid,” he hears whisper-whistled close into his ear, and he looks around to see mischievous blue eyes two inches away. “Want a cigarette?” he offers, and his tongue is playing around the edge of his candy.
“No,” Steve's mama answers, directing a steely glare at both boys.
Steve shakes his head and mouths a “sorry”. The other boy shrugs with a smile, and slides a candy cigarette out of the packet and behind Steve’s ear.
“I’m Bucky,” the boy says softly, and then buries his nose in the hymnal as the pastor clears his throat again.
Steve's mother gives him another disapproving glare, and Steve winces. He still sneaks the candy into his mouth while his mama's at the altar, though.
___
“C’mon, Bucky, I know your mama taught you to share!” Steve reaches up, but Bucky (of course, always) holds the cigarettes out of his grasp.
“And your mama told me that you’re not allowed to smoke: not with your lungs, Steve. I like you better breathing, okay?”
“Sure,” Steve says, and slumps down onto the swing next to Bucky. “Stupid worthless lungs,” he grouses, and kicks at the grass underfoot.
“Hey, I like your lungs plenty,” Bucky says, and he reaches over and ruffles Steve’s hair.
Steve ducks and grimaces, before watching with undisguised envy as Bucky purses his lips and blows a smoke ring languidly into the darkening Brooklyn skyline.
“Maybe when I’m fourteen, I’ll be able to handle a cigarette,” Steve sighs.
“Maybe you’ll break five foot tall as well,” Bucky adds, and drops his arm to rest on Steve’s slender shoulders. The smaller man lets out a small humourless laugh, and drops his head to Bucky’s shoulders, and breathes in the heavy smell of tobacco in the air.
___
"So, you're really thinking art school?" Bucky asks, pulling out a box of Winstons. The carton is the same blue as his eyes.
"There's not much of a market for 95-pound weaklings, Bucky," Steve says matter-of-factly, looking up at his friend. Bucky's lighting his cigarette, hand curled around his match and lips pursed just slightly. "Maybe art school will teach me a little perspective," he says mirthlessly. His fingers twitch slightly, ashing an imaginary cigarette. Bucky gives him a quizzical look as he inhales. "Maybe it's not just perspective I need," Steve says softly, to himself more than anything else.
"There's only no market for you because they know demand would outstrip supply," Bucky says eventually. "Guys like me, we're ten-a-penny. You're special, Steve. Guys like you should do more than haul television sets for a living."
"So should guys like you," Steve answers back automatically. "You could be something else - something better."
"Well, we could all be something better," Bucky shrugs, and Steve nods, conceding the point. "But Ol' Man Lloyd offered me a job, and I'm no college boy. New York's got a boy genius in Howard Stark. They don't need me."
"Stark's been in the papers saying he thinks that he can make televisions transmit in color," Steve says idly, ignoring the bubbling-under thought that Bucky's worth ten of any boy genius.
"That's peachy-keen for him," Bucky says sourly. He drops his cigarette butt on the floor and grinds it out with his heel. He frowns for a second, brow crinkling, then loops his arm around Steve's shoulder. "Tell you what, if the great Howard Stark manages a flying car I'll be interested. Color television notsomuch."
___
“Why am I posing for you, and not some pretty art-school broad from France?” Bucky asks, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He’s just wearing his vest and a pair of slacks, and his suspenders are down at his sides.
“I don’t want to draw some pretty art-school broad from France,” Steve shoots back automatically, and then blushes as Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Not for... not for my male anatomy class, anyway, Buck. Look, just be a pal and let me get this done, okay?”
“Mmm,” Bucky says, and he shifts again. The apartment’s sticky with late-August sunshine and Steve’s eyes track a bead of sweat prickling up on Bucky’s collarbone. “Can I at least smoke?” he asks, reaching into his pants and pulling out his trusty Winstons.
Steve nods, distracted, sketching the way Bucky’s holding himself: one arm on the armrest supporting his head, and his other hand brought around to light his cigarette. “In fact,” Steve says, not bothering to look up, “if you could hold it like that, Bucky, that’d be swell.”
“Swell,” Bucky replies, deadpan, as Steve sketches in the lines of his pants, his sock-covered feet, and the legs of the chair. He takes a minute to accurately get the contours of Bucky’s waist, and then brings his eyes up to Bucky’s face.
Bucky’s resting on his hand, still, and his lips are holding the cigarette in place, letting it pull down one of the corners of his mouth. He’s looking down at the floor through his eyelashes as he exhales a cloud of smoke away from himself. Steve can’t stop himself sketching in the quirk of happiness that appears at the corners of Bucky’s lips when he inhales deeply.
“Just swell,” he says softly to himself. He flips forward a page in sketchbook briefly, tries to work out whether he can pull off the way Bucky’s lips shape in a perfect ‘oh’ as he blows smoke-rings.
He decides he can’t, and looks up at Bucky, still grinning as his friend drops the filter of the now dead cigarette into the ashtray.
“Like something you see, Steve?” Bucky asks wryly. “You know,” he continues, as Steve starts blushing and stammering, “you’re going to owe me another packet of smokes if I have to keep this up.”
Steve glances up at Bucky, who looks amused, but nothing more. “I think I can stretch to that,” he says quietly, giving his friend a grateful smile.
___
The walk back from the Future Expo is quiet. The girls were nice girls who went home on the stroke of Cinderella curfew: no turning into pumpkins for them. Steve rather uncharitably thinks that they were half-way there already.
“Brooklyn didn’t decide to give me much of a send off, did it?” Bucky asks, as clouds pass over the moon, casting long shadows on the sidewalk.
“We’re saving the party for when we’re sure you’re gone,” Steve shoots back, but his throat feels tight. “No point in dancing if they decide they don’t want you after all.”
“You wouldn’t be dancing anyway,” Bucky smirks, and throws a heavy arm over Steve’s shoulders, pulling him closer. They walk like that for a time, the two of them bathed under uneven shadows.
“You gotta save a couple of small Nazis for me, at least,” Steve says, his voice sounding flat to his own ears. “Maybe the 107th needs a mascot,” he adds, with a huff of laughter.
“Any division can have a mascot,” Bucky snorts dismissively. “I don’t want some scrawny thing in short pants. I want my best friend fighting alongside me." He sighs, and rests his head down against Steve's. "So hurry up and have that growth spurt, you hear?"
"Bucky, I - " Steve starts, and then realises there's nothing he can say. "I will," he finishes, instead, sounding as numb as he feels.
They're almost home, and Steve's not sure what it's going to feel like without Bucky in the next room all the time, singing tunelessly along to the radio, leaving his laundry all over the bathroom floor, eating all of the darned cookies and never replacing them. He fumbles for his keys in his pocket, rather than thinking about it. They push their way into the apartment, and Steve's stomach knots as he realises it already feels less like home.
"Since it's my last night," Bucky says, changing the subject, "I was going to offer you a smoke: leave you in charge, man of the house," he pauses, glances down at Steve with something the smaller man can't identify. "But I've only got one cigarette left," he finishes softly.
"I guess we'll save it for when I meet you on the front, then," Steve manages, dropping Bucky's gaze and staring at the floor for a moment as he hears the scratch-whoosh of a match being lit.
"Maybe," Bucky murmurs, and when Steve looks up, Bucky's toe-to-toe, chest-to-chest with him. Bucky raises his cigarette to his lips again, takes a heavy drag, and his eyes flutter shut briefly, before he exhales away from Steve. He puts one hand on his smaller friend's tiny waist, and raises the other hand to Steve's lips.
Steve tentatively takes a drag, holding it in his lungs and letting it burn and valiantly fighting the effort to cough. He fails, and splutters for air as Bucky takes another drag from the cigarette himself.
"I guess I'll have to teach you how to smoke as well." Bucky exhales again, and Steve watches the wisps on the air, convinced he can feel them brushing over his lips.
The next thing that ghosts over his mouth is Bucky, his mouth warm and soft. He tastes like nicotine and the cheap whiskey he’s been drinking all night. His fingers soften at Steve’s waist, and Steve relaxes into the kiss, allowing his own hands to fall at Bucky’s shoulders.
Bucky pulls back with a sharp ‘damn!’, and shaking his hand as the cherry on his cigarette burns into his skin.
“I smoke Winstons,” Bucky says, giving Steve a small smile, looking shyer than Steve can ever remember seeing him. “So when I see you on the field, you’d better have Winstons.”
“I will.” Steve promises, and even if he forgot the brand-name, he reckons he’ll never forget the taste.
____
When Howard asks Steve if he has any requirements for the uniform, he doesn’t even hesitate in answering.
“I need a pocket with room for a packet of twenty Winstons Full Strength, Mr Stark, sir.”
____
The first thing Steve does when he and Bucky escape the Hydra camp is offer him a cigarette.
____