The sun hadn’t quite risen when you stepped outside the barracks. The base was still quiet, that strange pocket of stillness right before the day caught up, before boots hit gravel and drills started barking.

You rubbed your hands together once, then shoved them into your coat pockets.

And there, sitting on the low wooden steps with a cigarette balanced between two fingers and a slight lean to his shoulders like he’d been up for a while, was Bucky.

He glanced over at you with a half-smile, like you’d caught him doing something he wasn’t supposed to. Which, technically, the cigarette might’ve counted as. Not that anyone cared.

“Mornin’,” he said, voice still rough with sleep but softened with something else. Maybe just the fact that no one else was around.

You nodded, sitting on the step below him. Close, but not too close. The old planks creaked slightly beneath your weight.

“Can’t sleep?” you asked.

Bucky shrugged, exhaling smoke that curled into the air like fog. “Didn’t really try.”

A pair of birds squabbled in the rafters above. Somewhere across the field, a truck engine coughed to life.

“You know,” Bucky murmured, flicking ash into the dirt, “back home, I never got up this early. Not unless Steve dragged me outta bed.”

“Bet you complained the whole time.”

“Like hell I did,” he grinned, then paused. “Okay, maybe a little.”

The grin faded slowly, not all at once. He looked ahead again, eyes distant for just a second, like his thoughts had gone somewhere else, some alley back in Brooklyn, some future he wasn’t ready to meet.

“Feels weird,” he said after a pause. “This in between.”

You didn’t say anything back. You just leaned back on your hands, feeling the wood press against your palms, feeling the wind start to shift. The morning wouldn’t stay quiet for long.