You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To

“What about you, Barnes?” asks Dugan. The sound of his voice brings Bucky back to the present, dredges him out of memories of a beat-up little apartment with sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Got yourself a girl waiting for you back home?”
There’s an answer on the tip of his tongue, one that he’ll deliver with a cocky grin and a half-laugh and a little shake of his head. But Bucky is exhausted and hungry and so sore it hurts to move, and one of the guys in their platoon fucking died yesterday. His mouth tastes like iodine water and his feet hurt and none of it’s going to get better any time soon, and all at once Bucky misses Steve so badly he can barely see straight.
“Yeah,” Bucky declares abruptly, the word escaping from his mouth before he fully realizes what he’s saying. “Yeah, I do.”
 
[This fic presents a self-contained story that can easily be read on its own. If desired, however, it can also be read as a prequel to "Reconstruction Site" and "Amidst the Rubble". It takes place chronologically first but was written third.]