Work Text:
It felt like the blank paper was mocking him.
There were dozens of similar ones crumpled up in the wastebasket, each covered in scribbles and half finished sketches and ideas that never went anywhere. His back was killing him from sitting curled over the desk, head pounding from the eye strain, wrist and fingers cramping. He needed a break, but the calendar showed a week till the deadline and he didn't have a line to show for his troubles.
Well, it wasn't exactly the whole truth.
In the bottom drawer of his desk, there was a stack of pages ready for inking, with a notebook full of storyline for next issues. Steve poured his heart into those pages, and he knew, without any fake modesty, they were heads above anything the SHIELD comics were publishing these days. It would be a crime to change them.
He also knew that his editor was right.
Even if he'd never shown anything incriminating, the relationship between Captain and his yet unnamed companion… It was flying too close to the sun.
He sighed, resigned.
Not everything had to be art. Some things were meant to be stupid, overly patriotic hodgepodge to teach little kids to collect old paper.
He pulled out a new sheet of paper and started sketching a new character. He looked a little ridiculous, with shorts and high boots and tights, but if SHIELD wanted a little kid running around the battlefield punching Nazis, who he was to tell them otherwise.
After a second of thinking, he scribbled a name under the picture, and smiled. It was maybe a little childish of him, but he was sure no one who knew him would ever read this.
All Bucky wanted was to sleep. They'd arrived at the camp so late in the night it was already an early morning, and he barely managed to peel off his dirty uniform before collapsing. Short of the Hitler himself being carried in a cage, there was nothing worth opening his eyes.
Unfortunately, his so-called friends had a different idea.
“Why didn't you tell us you're famous, Barnes?” He could hear the shit-eating grin on Morita's face, and he pulled a blanket over his head trying to ignore him. It didn't help.
“And then there's Bucky,” Morita started to recite, sounding like a newsreel: “always at Captain's side…”
He poked his head out, blinking in the bleary morning light. Morita was holding some kind of children's magazine - who knows how it'd found its way to the frontline. It was printed on cheap paper, bright colors bleeding into each other, but the drawing looked familiar. Suddenly awake, he yanked it out of Morita's hand and opened it on the first page.
“Fuck.”
He dropped the comic.
“Hey! Do you know how much it cost me?”
He didnt know and didnt care. Without a word, he turned around and started packing his backpack.
“Are you okay, Barnes?” Morrita sounded genuinely worried. He shook his head.
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“Home. I have to kill my best friend.”