Bucky’s Secret Tactics For Helping Pre-serum Steve

Bucky’s secret tactics for helping pre-serum Steve

that jaunty stroll and arm-over-the-shoulder move are so that he physically cannot walk too fast for Steve to keep up. 

also so that it doesn’t seem like he’s doing anything out of the ordinary when he does it to keep Steve warm, or help him limp home.

always makes out like he’s being a jerk making Steve read aloud from books, but really it’s so that Steve won’t miss any of it with his bad hearing, which he will if Bucky reads it. (Funny how that practise at public speaking later came in handy).

this is also why he tends to turn to look directly at Steve when speaking.

same reason he likes his music and radio played loud and is uncharacteristically vocally critical of people who talk over the picture at the movies (but will also keep up a muttered commentary on the plot if he thinks Steve is missing things).

also developed a habit of repeating funny things to himself, after they’re said, so Steve can hear it twice. 

being a clothes horse growing up so’s he’d have all these hand-me-downs that he needs to give to someone (who doesn’t have any male relatives) because of fashion, steve.

what a coincidence that he happens to wear colors that Steve looks good in.

got himself an umbrella once and insisted on taking it everywhere as a fashion statement (in fact to keep the sun and rain off Steve).

when they got into boxing, was especially assiduous in teaching Steve how to block his upper body because having the wind punched out of his chest has caused serious trouble with his asthma in the past.

acts like he needs the window open to holler and banter at passersby, but really it’s because he’s noticed steve coughs worse when he smokes with the window shut. 

and since yapping at people out the window is an established bad habit, it doesn’t seem odd when he’s happy to stay in, lounging across the foot of Steve’s bed to get to the window, whenever Steve is sick.

his vegetarian phase was on account of steve’s diabetes. 

if he has to sit next to the fire, in winter, he complains loudly about how overheated he is until Steve switches places with him. 

on the prowl for food hustles he always gets iron-rich things because of Steve’s anemia, and then nags Steve into eating them all to get rid of the evidence or because he doesn’t like them.

accidentally ‘broke’ an old atomiser of his ma’s so he could give it to steve and use it to dispense homemade saltwater nasal spray whenever he gets a cold/sinusitis. 

always pulling Steve up onto his feet so the strain is off his back.

noticed that the Rogers’ couch hurts Steve’s back and that’s why he keeps up the whole shoe-shine, blanket-fort-on-the-floor thing. 

gives Steve home-knitted socks from his ma and asks that Steve doesn’t tell her they’re far too big and thick (but in fact he told her to make them too big and thick because Steve gets cramp in his legs and it warms them up.) 

finds songs with slow, steady tempo to absent-mindedly hum or whistle whenever Steve is having an asthma attack so that he will subconsciously synchronise his breathing with Bucky’s. 

will also sometimes do it under his breath to lull Steve into falling asleep.

becomes an absolute ninja at refilling Steve’s glass without him noticing so that Steve gets plenty of fluids (Steve could never understand why it seemed to take him so long to drink anything, and why this mysteriously stopped happening after he woke up in the future – to this day he secretly thinks that there must be something different about future-water but he’s too polite to ask.)

got a job as a lifeguard at one of the pools off Coney Island once because he realised it came with free first aid training (especially in how to help people breathe). 

always keeps an eye out for non-strenuous artsy or clerical jobs within easy travelling distance of Steve’s place, or on the way to his own work so that he can accompany Steve in dangerous parts of Brooklyn.

or sweet talks his own bosses into believing that they urgently need a small man for that one specific office task.

(incidentally it was he who got them both jobs as garbage-removers, shoeshine boys and newsies when they were kids).

makes sure he and Steve ham it up and become a funny vaudeville style double-act, whenever they work in the same place together, so that people will think of them as a single unit and won’t want to fire Steve and break up the set. 

he subconsciously keeps up a lot of these habits even after Steve has got the serum, and after he himself has forgotten who he is. 

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