teatotally:

After one of the times I saw Captain America: Civil War in the theatre, minim-calibre and I were sitting in her car talking about this scene and shrieking like a couple of Beatlemaniacs at Shea Stadium. “Do you know what this means?” “They’re working together as a team, they probably practiced this in the war!”

It’s so amazing, you guys: Bucky sees the second flashbang come in, he remembers enough about Steve to know that if he kicks it to him, Steve can protect them with his shield. Despite all the faults of his memory, and trying to pretend he doesn’t remember Steve, when the grenades are flying, he instinctually knows what to do and what Steve is capable of. He trusts Steve. I feel like this is some kind of next-level Battle Boyfriends broccoli test shit, and I love it.

Now, flashbangs (stun grenades) weren’t developed until the ‘70s, because in wartime the whole point of a grenade is to, you know, kill the enemy, not disorient them with nonlethal means. And I’m assuming these are flashbangs both from the shape and the fact that we’ve seen that Steve could be blown off a freeway by an actual concussion or fragmentation grenade, and this would have less force on detonation – otherwise Steve might have been blown backward through those walls (and flashbangs can have lethal consequences, there are some really horrific instances of that happening). But I could be wrong! 

Still, I have no problem with headcanoning that Howard Stark would see it as a fun challenge to come up with a stun-type grenade they could use to, say, clear an enclosed space without risking their personnel. There was a type of concussion grenade used in WWII but it was designed to actually produce casualties in close combat or used for demolition, so Howard could have cooked it up as just one more toy to add to their arsenal.

I can just see Steve and Bucky practicing all kinds of maneuvers, testing how far he could go before injury, driving everyone around them to fits with their dangerous shenanigans, etc. One of the few things I liked about Age of Ultron was Steve and Thor doing their hammer-shield tricks; I loved imagining them concocting all those ridiculous moves and probably accidentally clobbering each other unconscious all the time, or zapping each other with lightning until they figured out exactly how to make things work. And I love the fanon that Steve was probably always practicing shield tricks like the step and flip in the elevator scene in Winter Soldier; I especially love thinking of Bucky heckling him from the sidelines while he made up uses for it.

I just think it’s really obvious here that despite everything, Bucky trusts Steve to know what his intention is, that Steve will react quickly, that this exactly like they used to practice together in the war. They’re working together again, for this brief moment, before everything goes to hell. And I am so emotionally compromised by it, I just really need them to be Battle Boyfriends together again, okay?