Chapter Text
They were playing the fucking footage from D.C. again and it was grinding his nerves between the gears of his poorly-reassembled mind. He’d risked stopping in this shitty bar in this tiny town because he needed some beer and real food to chase away the thoughts of Hydra and here they were again on the damn tv. Then, the channel switched to a long-distance view of the airfield outside the Triskelion and he watched, heart in his throat, as the quinjets were forcibly grounded one-by-one, by him.
“For fuck’s sake,” a little blonde with an equally little tank-top said right next to him. She had leaned in to get a fresh beer and stayed when she saw the footage playing. “That’s the airfield at the Triskelion? If I was going to invest in three stupid helicarriers, you can bet my airfield would be three times that size and better guarded. Fucking SHIELD.”
“What do you know about it, anyway?” he growled at her, his hackles raised right up.
“Well, I was a pilot,” the girl said, turning to face him and tugging on the chain that dipped beneath the very low neckline of her tank-top to reveal a set of dog tags. “Air Force. Top of my class at the academy. It’s in my blood…my dad was a fighter pilot in the Gulf War, my grandpa was naval air force in Korea, and my great-grandpa flew in the European Theatre in World War II. And as a pilot, I’m telling you that I have seen a lot of airfields and that one is garbage.”
Her speech sent a jolt through his system and he completely forgot about D.C. for one beautiful moment. “What’s your name?”
The girl raised an eyebrow and smirked at him. “Peyton Lawfley.” She dropped her tags and extended her right hand expectantly.
He hesitated, almost long enough to be rude, but shook hands. She had a surprisingly strong grip and now that he was looking at her head-on, he recognized how physically fit she was and the confidence in her stance. Her size and face were completely misleading because the rest of her screamed military. He didn’t recognize the name, Lawfley, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t known her great-grandfather. On that note, being from a military family, one that fought in Europe, no less, there was a good chance she’d know his name. His identity was confusing enough to him, though, and he didn’t have the energy to come up with a fake one on the spot. If he just didn’t use his nickname with her, maybe his real name was innocuous enough. “James Barnes.”
“Nice to meet you, James,” Peyton said, her smile not having changed. She hadn’t made the connection. Good.
He released her hand and took a pull from his beer, then asked, “So you said you were a pilot. I didn’t think people ever stopped being pilots.”
Peyton laughed once bitterly and sat down on the stool beside him, her back to the tv. “You’re right, but I’m not Air Force anymore and I can’t get a job flying commercially either, so I’m not getting paid to be a pilot.”
“What do you do?”
“Engine repair.” She snorted and said, “If your check engine light is on, I’m your girl.”
I wouldn’t mind you being my girl and it has nothing to do with my car. He shook off that thought, confused and surprised by it. She was attractive and interesting, but those things hadn’t affected him since…probably 1945. He finished his beer and, a moment later, Peyton finished hers and pointedly slid both their bottles forward along with a ten-dollar bill. “What are you drinking, handsome?” she asked.
Now he snorted at her forwardness, reminded, oddly, of his process of picking up dames a few lifetimes ago. “Whatever you’re drinking.”
Peyton grinned and ordered two local beers. It was a porter, much darker than he would have normally ordered, but very mellow and easy to drink. He gave Peyton an approving nod, then took a second pull. They drank quietly for a few minutes and he kept feeling her eyes on him. Finally, she asked, “So, where did you serve?”
The question completely threw him and he looked to her, hopefully not entirely blowing his cover. “What?”
Peyton was smiling softly, perhaps to convince him not to be intimidated, but her eyes were clear and flicking all over him, picking up tiny details. “You were a soldier too, once, I can see it in your eyes. What branch?”
His heart was in his throat, choking him. He’d been a soldier twice, once for the US Army, who had left him to die twice in two years, and once against his will for enemies of the United States. Depending on where Peyton had flown and what kind of missions she’d run, he might have fought against her or her family members. He struggled for a horrible moment as Peyton’s smile faded and her eyebrows creased in concern. “I see.” She turned her head to make eye contact with the bartender and held up a credit card. “Rick? Open a tab for me and my friend here.” The bartender took the credit card and walked away. During the exchange, he, Bucky, that was his name, had stiffened like a gargoyle, but Peyton just looked to him with that soft concern and held up her beer between them. “No need to talk unless you want to, Barnes. Here’s to not being soldiers anymore.”
He stared at her in surprise at the toast, but clinked beer bottles with her and drank to it. Here’s to not being soldiers anymore. He wasn’t a soldier anymore, was he? Soldiers followed orders and the first thing he’d done when he walked away from Hydra was mentally break down as much of his conditioning as he could so he wouldn’t have to follow orders ever again.
He and Peyton found the bottom of their beers and were on another round before he spoke. “What did you see? When you looked at me like that your face totally changed.”
Peyton’s expression shifted to sadness and disgust. “I saw a POW.” That stunned him. He’d expected her to think he’d worked in black ops, which wasn’t far off-base, or that he’d defected or been dishonorably discharged, which also wasn’t far off-base, or that he’d been a sniper, which was just plain true. But that wasn’t what she’d seen. Peyton sighed and explained, “One of my squadron, Ollie, went down in enemy territory and they wouldn’t let us go back for him. I fought it tooth and nail because I knew that if Ollie was dead, his parents deserved to know for sure and if he was alive, the enemy would find him and torture him. But we were bombers, not pararescue, and we weren’t even supposed to be there, so they couldn’t sanction a rescue mission. When the ground offensive moved into that area two months later, they found Ollie. Alive.” Nausea hit Bucky and he watched as Peyton slammed a good portion of her beer, bringing the bottle down on the bar hard. Her green eyes were unseeing. “By the time I got leave to see him in the hospital, he’d attempted suicide twice and I couldn’t really blame him when he told me about some of the shit in his head. He was missing more fingers and toes than he had left, one ear had been cut off, they’d carved out his right eye, and they’d castrated him. Those were the physical things, anyway. When I went to him, I tried to apologize and tell him that we tried to go back for him, but Ollie…he just gave me this thousand-yard stare and said that that was the real torture, knowing that no one was coming.”
Acid churned in Bucky’s gut as he thought of the memories he had of Azzano and of the Alps, before the wiping began. Peyton’s friend was right, the worst part had been realizing that no one was coming to save him, that there would be no end to it. “Where is he now?”
“Dead,” she said softly. “He spent some time in a psych facility and they thought he was doing better, but I guess he wasn’t. Something like seventeen vets kill themselves every day in this country now. It’s fucking awful.” Peyton swiped at her eyes and he could see the glassy sheen in them in the odd lighting of the bar. “How long have you been out?” she asked.
“Few months,” he answered hoarsely. He was rounding up….he’d barely been out of D.C. and away from Hydra for eight weeks.
Peyton looked to him sharply, the sadness in her eyes replaced by urgent concern. “What the fuck are you doing in a shit bar in the middle of nowhere?”
He shrugged. “Ran out of gas. Needed a drink and a motel.”
“You’re not staying in a motel.” She made a gesture to the bartender, who raised an eyebrow, but appeared with two shot glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He poured the shots, then left the bottle. Peyton picked up her shot, then offered the other to him. “You’re staying with me.”
He reached across himself to accept the shot with his right hand and he knew she noticed, but he didn’t care. He hated that left arm. Two months ago, he’d nearly caved Steve’s face in with that arm and he’d used it to successfully do far worse damage to others. “You sure that’s a good idea, doll? You hardly know anything about me.”
Peyton gave him a long, assessing look. “I know enough. So, how do you feel about forgetting all of that bullshit for the rest of the night?”
He raised an eyebrow at the shot, wondering if the serum would even let him get drunk. It was only a bastardized version of the serum, sure, but still. “I think that sounds nice in theory. Not sure I can get that drunk, though.”
Peyton tipped back her shot, eyes locked on him, and smirked. “Let’s find out. Come on, you’re behind.”
They talked while they drank. It was strange because he couldn’t remember the last real conversation he’d had with someone. It had probably been in 1945. Peyton kept returning to her beer and so did he, but whenever she managed to get him to carry the conversation for a little while, she poured more shots. After what might have been their fifth shots, Peyton asked him, “So, where are you going? You said you ran out of gas here.”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. Just…starting over.”
For a moment, she said nothing, then, she asked, “What do you like to do?”
Another shrug, though he did frown, having fully expected her to ask why he wasn’t with or going towards family. “Don’t know. It’s been a long time since I was able to like anything.”
Peyton pondered that for a moment, then said, “Flying was my life for a while. Everything else was just killing time until I got up in the air again. Playing cards, drinking, singing, getting laid, it all just paled in comparison. Now I can’t fly. I’ll never fly professionally again and I’ll probably never be able to afford a private craft. I had to completely rethink my life.” He wondered what had happened. She made it sound like she’d been dishonorably discharged, though for what he couldn’t guess. “When I was a kid, my dad was honorably discharged and he opened a repair shop here. My mom had been sick for awhile by then and it was clear that it was only a matter of time, so he wanted to reestablish roots in the place where I grew up so that we could be close and I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to anyone else. I spent most of my teens in his garage helping out. He taught me everything I knew about engines…and about plenty of other things too. I was afraid to come home with my tail between my legs, my flying career cut short when my dad and two generations before him had served this country as pilots, but I didn’t know what else to do. When I walked in the door, I could tell he already knew, someone had called him. But he just handed me a wrench and said, ‘Hey, Peyton. Take a look at that ‘Vette for me, wouldya?’” Peyton laughed to herself and he felt some warmth in his chest too. “He told me I had to just find something that I liked to do and maybe it would become the new plan or maybe it would just pass the time until I figured things out. Well, I liked working in his garage.”
“So, is it the plan or still passing the time?”
She shrugged. “I can’t tell anymore, which probably means it’s working.
Bucky shrugged and poured two more shots, offering one to Peyton. “To passing the time.”
Peyton grinned and accepted the shot. “To passing the time.”
The whiskey felt so damn good going down and as it did, the warm fog at the edges of his vision took center-stage. So, he could get drunk. Excellent.