The way Steve marks Bucky’s progress in memory healing/recovering from being brainwashed/therapy is by the nicknames Bucky uses for Steve.
For the first few weeks, Bucky only called him Steve. Once, he called him Stevie, but then wouldn’t talk to anyone for the rest of the day.
After that, he started calling Steve the normal pet names/nicknames like Babe and Baby.
It wasn’t until the year and a half mark that Bucky called Steve, Doll. When he did, Steve just stared at him for a solid three minutes them tackle-hugged him. Bucky let out the most unmanly squeak (It sounded like a kitten was being sat on)… though he’ll never admit it to anyone.
From then on it was a rarity to hear Bucky call Steve by anything but, Doll.
personally I like to think steve’s birthday isn’t actually July 4th but someone asked him when his birthday was when he was doing his little show tour thingy and he just said it as an accident and/or a panic response in a bid to seem even more patriotic and everyone believed him and now it’s like 100 years later and he’s too deep in the lie to back out now bc he knows all the avenger’s would fucking publicly roast him if he admitted july 4th wasn’t actually his birthday- like he would literally never live that down- so he lives his life in fear that some bitch ass historian is gonna find his birth certificate and expose him
avengers: happy birthday, steve!
bucky, eyes narrowing: what the fuck your birthday isn’t until-
steve, holding back tears: shut up
Bucky tries to hand him a birthday card one cold December day, and Steve tackles him out a window before anyone else can see what he’s holding
Also, this would explain a lot about Steve. His recklessness and his morals. XD
EDIT: JUST IMAGINE LIL STEVE ROGERS RUNNING HEADFIRST INTO DANGER ‘CAUSE THAT’S WHAT AUNT DIANA DOES? AND BUCKY RUNNING AFTER HIM ALL, “YOU ARE NOT ZEUS’S OFFSPRING, STEVE, YOU COULD DIE.”
I was watching TWS today, and when this scene came up, I found myself wondering what languages Steve speaks. Everyone talks about how many languages Bucky speaks, but I have scarcely seen a HC about Steve’s ability to assimilate languages. So I looked beyond the MCU into the (iffy) world of wikis, and apparently, Steve is also multilingual: Captain America: thanks to his enhanced memory from the Super-Soldier Serum can speak English, German, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, French and Italian. There might be even more. He picked up most of the languages fighting in World War II. [x]
When you’re a programmed assassin but you’re still soft
Headcanon: The closest HYDRA ever came to losing the Winter Soldier before Steve Rogers came along was when they ordered him to shoot the dog too when his target took it out for a walk. He killed every single member of that handling team, and the target, and then took the dog and ran. They caught up with him in Brooklyn NY and captured him there, but never had any idea what he did with the dog.
The dog ended up somewhere in Bed-Stuy, tangled with some tracksuit Mafia, got a bit dinged up before moving in with human disaster Hawkeye and developing a taste for pizza.