Chapter Text
It comes with the territory, really: three baby sisters, with a mother as indulgent as theirs is—sometimes—so yeah. Bucky knows the story. Bucky could tell the story himself, if he had to—and he’d pause in all the right places, too; he’d lower his voice, and flutter his eyelashes at the goopy-sugar parts, and Becca’d sigh and Margey would giggle and Betsy’d throw herself back onto the bed with a grin and wriggle her toes beneath the blankets because they’d all be just so taken with the romance of it all: so, yeah.
It’s not that Bucky cares much for it, really, on his own. For himself. Because he doesn’t. It’s all just hearts-and-flowers mumbo-jumbo. And it’s not like everyone’s even got one to worry about, so it’s stupid to sit around thinkin’ on it so hard only to have it be a wash, in the end. Stupid. That’s what it is, mostly. Fairytales.
He’s got three baby sisters, though. And girls, y’know. They ask after that kinda stuff constantly. Can’t get enough of it, eat it up like nothing else. So yeah; he knows the story.
But it ain’t like he’d had a choice in the matter. So, there.
Right.
“But momma,” and Bucky’s eyes almost fall right out their sockets with the way he rolls ‘em, sticks out his tongue to nobody when he hears Margey whining through thin walls, when he flattens his hand onto the book on his lap and mouths exaggeratedly along with the familiar script: “How do ya know?”
And Bucky don’t make fun at the way his momma laughs, ‘cause that’s rude, but he could do it. The point is that he’s heard it just like this, after just that question and before just what’s gonna come so many times that he could copy it with just the same basics, if not the same magic.
‘Cause it’s his momma, after all.
“Well,” and Bucky knows exactly how his mother’s voice will drop before it does: conspiratorial, and Bucky knows how she leans in like she’s telling her babies a secret, and Bucky doesn’t smile when he thinks about it, when he thinks about the wonder in his baby sisters’ eyes. No, he absolutely does not smile to think of that sort of sappiness.
He’s just got something in his teeth from dinner. Just, y’know. Baring his teeth, so he can work it out.
“The biggest mistake people make is going about thinking like it’s a thing that you know you’re missing, when that’s not the case at all, really.”
And Bucky likes that Momma starts it that way—Bucky likes that she gives all the dumb people what-for, because he doesn’t think nobody’s missing nothing, just ‘cause they’ve got a soulmate they haven’t found yet, or maybe they don’t got a soulmate at all. He hasn’t found his soulmate yet, if one’s out there for him, and Bucky don’t like his life any worse or better for that fact. And Steve ain’t got one yet, either, s’far as Bucky knows—and Bucky’d know, if Stevie found his soulmate. He’d definitely know. They’re best friends, they’d tell each other. They tell each other everything.
And Stevie, well. Stevie’s not half of anything. Stevie is all of the good things. All of ‘em. None of ‘em halved, neither.
So he likes that his momma starts the story like that.
Or else, he would like it. If he cared at all about a stupid story about stupid soulmates.
Which he doesn’t. Not really.
Don’t matter to him one bit.
“You never know it’s not there, so there’s no use at all trying to figure out where the little hole you’ve got is, trying to tease out where you’ll feel all warm and full and right all of a sudden, when you meet ‘em.”
And Bucky, well—he’s a curious type, you understand. Thinks all the time. Real intelligent-like, if he’s honest. So the fact that he’s never tried to figure out where he’s got an empty-space where his soulmate’s gonna slot in some day, that’s kind of a given.
Steve asked him, though. Once. Asked if Bucky thought maybe his soulmate could slot in somewhere that’d prop up his lungs, or straighten his spine, or steady his heart. Steve’d been only just getting his breath back after the asthma came and took it from him, so Bucky figures that’s why he said it. Steve’s real smart, see.
But Bucky’d told Steve he didn’t need no soulmate to be better’n just about anybody, weak insides or strong ones. Told Steve he’d be holding up and straightening out and steadying whoever was lucky enough to be his match. Bucky’d said as much, and Steve never said another word about it, just worked at breathing slower, more even.
Bucky didn’t leave his side, didn’t take his hand away from Steve’s shoulder ‘til his face wasn’t quite so red; ‘til his chest didn’t heave quite so fast.
And in the end, Steve was fine. Steve didn’t need a soulmate to be just fine.
“Some people used to swear the world was brighter, that they could see colors better, or that a new freckle’d show up on their skin, that matched their mate’s,” Momma says, and Bucky knows she’s shaking her head as she does. “But that’s all just conjecture, just silly nonsense, it’s not like that at all. Doesn’t happen out here,” and Bucky knows how she’ll bring her hand to rest over her heart. “Happens in here.”
Bucky hears the silence like a weighty thing; knows how his sisters are staring, all wide eyes and slack jawed, all bated breath and wonder.
“As a matter of fact,” his mother lowers her voice a little; “That’s where you feel it first, just here.”
And Bucky doesn’t have to be in the same room to know that his momma’s reaching out to tap playfully just below each of his sisters’ collarbones when she makes the sound with a smile: “Ba-bump.” Mimics that simple beat with each of the girls in kind. “Ba-bump.” “Ba-bump.”
And his sister’s giggle—Margey downright squeals—and Bucky’s hand is only at his own chest ‘cause it’s kinda sore, just then. He was lying wrong against the arm of the couch, though. It’s nothing to make a fuss about.
Nope.
“It’s always right there, and you never think on it twice unless you’re nervous, or you’re excited, or you’re scared.”
Or you’re best friends with Steven Grant Rogers, and you gotta watch careful to make sure your own heart’s not pumping too hard if Steve’s following alongside you. And Steve’s always following alongside you, so you always gotta be careful, ‘cause if your heart’s pounding then Stevie’s almost ‘bout to give way, and that can’t happen.
That can’t ever happen.
“But when you find them,” his momma’s saying, a little dreamy, and Bucky knows she puts it on because the more shine in her words, the more the girls will sparkle with it, the more they’ll get stars in their eyes, have good dreams when they sleep.
“When they find you, you notice it. You notice, and you think, oh, how did I ever think it was right, before? How could I have let it pump away for all that time when it was so very, very wrong without the rest of the melody?”
And they sigh, the girls: well. Becca sighs first, then the other two. The babies always follow Becca’s lead.
Bucky figures they’ll see the error of their ways soon enough, and start followin’ his lead, but he’s patient. He’ll wait.
“It’s like a story where you have the things that are said laid out in quote-marks, but you’ve got no idea who’s saying them, you’re missing why it matters,” Momma’s going on. “And suddenly, there’s a whole book to be read. And even better,” he hears the rustle as Momma leans in: “A whole book to be written, with that one special someone who means everything,” and Bucky closes his eyes for a second, can see how Momma reaches out and pinches each girl’s chin, feather-light. “Means everything because they’re tied up in everything you are. Right down to the blood and the bones.”
Bucky’s eyes fly open when he hears his father’s footsteps in the kitchen, catches the soft smile on his face, and Bucky doesn’t care about soulmates. He doesn’t.
And he’s only rubbing his chest again, now, ‘cause it’s still sore, okay? It’s just sore.
It’s no big thing.
“It’s as if you’ve always had the outline of a masterpiece, and then you’re watching that outline fill up with all the colors,” Momma’s telling the girls, and Bucky can hear as she stands to tuck them in.
“That’s what it is,” she breathes out soft, slow. “You feel it, you hear it.”
And Bucky’s not listening in harder than normal or anything. He’s not holding his breath to hear the end.
“You know it.”
He waits until his Pop’s back down the hall before he lets the breath out, slow.
For no particular reason, of course. No reason or anything.
“Like how a hymn sounds when you sing it by yourself, at home,” Becca says, tone all prim and superior and Bucky sometimes wants to tug on her hair extra hard to shut her up. Just a little. “But then how it sounds on Sundays, with the choir takin’ parts.”
“Just like that,” Bucky knows that Momma nods, there, and then moves back toward the bed where she’d been going closer to the door.
“But you must always remember,” Momma cautions, like she always does. “All sorts of hymns are beautiful. Sometimes they’re best with all the voices, but sometimes one is just as lovely. And sometimes two voices don’t make any sense to bring together, until you do bring them together, and then they’re something really special, out of the blue.” He sees Momma’s shrug, in his head.
“Same’s true of people. Not everyone has a soulmate. Not everyone finds their soulmate even if they’ve got one. It isn’t good, or bad, either way. Love’s everywhere. It comes in all different shapes and sorts. Having a soulmate, having that kind of love, the kind that’s a pulse and a song and a tether that you feel? That’s just one kind.”
And that’s what he always tells Steve, when he looks sad when people talk about soulmates. ‘Cause Steve won’t say nothing, not really, but Bucky knows him good enough, now, to know when he’s sore about something little, versus when Steve’s hurtin’ about something bigger and badder that means a whole lot. And Steve’s not always caught on it, but when the girls in class make eyes at everyone but him, because they’re blind and stupid, Bucky knows Steve wonders. That Steve thinks even though they’re still young, and it don’t mean nothing, that he won’t find a person. That nobody will feel fluttery and right when his tripping-heart tangles up with theirs. And Bucky doesn’t believe that, Bucky can’t believe a guy like Steve could ever be left out in the cold, but he doesn’t know everything.
So he tells Steve that even if there’s no soulmate out there for him, there’s somebody, if he wants ‘em. And if he don’t want nobody, well. He’ll always have Bucky.
Somehow, though, Stevie always still looks sad, after that. Sometimes sadder.
And then it’s Bucky, who starts hurtin’.
“Don’t you fret too badly though,” Momma’s soothing the girls, though, because Bucky knows they’re still too young to understand it, still scared about what happens if there’s not the one waiting somewhere out there, just for them. “Not having a soulmate doesn’t mean you won’t have love, but it runs strong in our families, darlings. Both sides, your Papa and me.”
And Bucky knows the girls are satisfied, knows it before he hears Momma kiss them all goodnight and shut the door. Bucky knows the story.
But, y’know. It’s not like he really cares.
______________________
When Bucky meets Steve Rogers, the kid can’t seem to keep air in his lungs long enough for it to do any good. Once the bullies clear out—cowards—Bucky’s not sure what draws him to settle an arm around the kid, to pull him in closer than he really ought to, given they don’t know each other one bit, but that’s exactly what he does: Bucky pulls Steve in close and tells him to breathe like Bucky does, to follow his lead if he can, and keeps him there until he can. Bucky doesn’t even know Steve’s name yet, but that’s what he does.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that Steve’s wrestling for his right to be alive in the world against a body and a city and a stubborn streak a mile wide that would rather put him in the ground: it doesn’t take long for Bucky to realize this is how it is, with Steve. This is the status quo.
So it’s really no surprise that Bucky comes to think that maybe he needs to be a doctor, when he grows up. ‘Cause when Steve’s real bad, when Steve’s mom’s eyes are red and the priest is leaving and the doctors are shaking their heads: well. Bucky can’t be a mom. And he sure can’t be a priest, that’s for sure: but a doctor. He could probably do that. He’s smart, after all; real intelligent-like.
If you didn’t know.
So he reads. He reads a whole bunch. Where he was always good in school, he pushes for better: he reads science, all sorts, and science fiction, because it’s close enough and a guy can’t just read boring stuff all day, y’know.
But then, Steve’ll get sick again. Steve always gets sick again, and Bucky doesn’t know what to do except sneak into Steve’s room after Mrs. Rogers tells him that his parents’ll be worrying after him, except his parents know already that if they’re worrying after Bucky, it ain’t nothin’ compared to how Bucky’s worryin’ after Steve. And Bucky can watch from the doorway when the doctors’ faces fall. He can watch from the corner and count the too-few times that Stevie’s chest rises and falls when his momma’s bent over him, biting her lip to bruising just to keep from coming apart. He can do that, and he can pray, and he knows he’s probably not good enough for any God up there to listen to, but Stevie is.
Steve’s more than good enough.
And Bucky can’t help it, can’t help the way his chest hurts with how much he needs Steve to be okay, can’t help the way that hurt translates into the motion of his feet, the way he kneels down at Steve’s bedside, a closeness as much as it is a plea—and the buzzing, clawing, twisting hurt makes him takes Steve’s hands. The hurt makes him crawl into bed when Steve’s cold, or when Steve’s shaking even as it’s warm: the hurt makes him line his frame against Steve’s as best he can on the off-chance that the breath Bucky can control if he tries real hard will guide Steve’s own lungs, will give him something to work from; that the heartbeat he can’t keep from racing with terror, with the kind of fear that makes you feel the world’s ending—and it will, the world will end if Steve’s gone, Bucky’s sure of that; something vital will go out and the whole thing will change and everything they know will be different in the worst ways and this world will end and the new one will be a shadow in comparison, Bucky knows—but he can’t keep his heart from pounding hard against Steve’s back, or sometimes up against Steve’s front; he can’t.
So Bucky just hopes that if his heart’s going to rattle at the bones of his ribs, and maybe Steve’s too, for the closeness, that it’s got strength enough to guide Steve's own faltering, skipping, blood-leaking, valve-waning thumping: that it’ll shake hard enough that maybe, just maybe, Steve’s heart will take the extra force of it and learn how to steady, learn to make it hold.
Learn how to stay, and not take half of Bucky when it goes.
Steve always gets sick again. And by some grace that Bucky doesn’t understand but won’t question, not for the life of him, Steve always gets better. And if Bucky’s chest is tight, is raw with the hurting when Steve’s on his deathbed, then it’s loose and warm and bright and full when Steve’s eyes open again, and they’re clear—when Bucky can tip his forehead to the center of Steve’s chest and drink in the relief of his best friend’s heart beating a little too fast, a little too faint, but there. There. His lungs bearing up with a little crackle to them, but nothing too fierce.
Bucky doesn’t know the words for that feeling, for the way it all lets go and puts him right again.
Til the next time.
And every time, Bucky hates himself a little, for not being enough. He makes himself study harder. He reads less fiction. Tries to be more of what Steve needs, tries to learn enough to help for real. There aren’t cures, yet, aren’t treatments good enough for what Steve needs, and maybe it’s funny, that the reading takes him here, puts him back where he started, curled on the couch as his sisters get tucked in.
And the story’s the same, really; his momma had it right, for the parts that really matter: s’all vital signs and brainwaves and biorhythms, that’s what they’re calling ‘em. Bioresonance is what it means, when you find what people call a soulmate. The way your lungs breathe somehow tangle up. The way your heartbeats reach out and sync up. The way your blood flows, how strong or how soft, and the energy in your body, the way you exist in the space you take up, the goddamn rate of molecular vibration: all that stuff, apparently, leaves you all tangled up, sharing something metaphysical and supportive and solid and true.
And that’s all great, really. It’s great. But Bucky’s interested in one bit in particular. Bucky’s interested in how when a person gets sick, their soulmate can help them get well. Their soulmate can hold them close and share something Bucky doesn’t understand, except for the numbers, except for the facts on the paper in black and white that say when this woman had a weak heart, her husband helped her steady the arrhythmias by holding her close, and letting his own pulse somehow steer hers clear. How one man’d been near death’s door with TB and his wife’d braved the risk and brought him home and just breathed, and breathed, and breathed til he was well. It’s not sensical. It’s not logical. It don’t make a lick of sense.
But Bucky knows, somehow, that if Stevie had his soulmate, he’d be well again, too—or closer to it, at least. Close enough. He’d make it through all this. He’d never ever leave, not before his time.
And maybe Steve’s a fucking catch that everyone’s too blind to notice. Maybe Steve himself makes this real goddamn difficult by taking every dame Bucky talks him up to and barely making eye contact, hardly even makin’ an effort. Though Bucky supposes Steve’d know, real quick, if she was the one, so maybe it’s Bucky’s fault. Maybe he needs to find better gals. Maybe.
Don’t matter, though. Wouldn’t be a thing worth earning if it didn’t take a little elbow grease, if it didn’t demand the hardest work Bucky’s capable of putting in.
And it is worth it. Steve’s worth it.
More’n anything in the world, Steve is worth it.
So Bucky tries. And he keeps trying.
And it takes too many years for him to realize that the doctors aren’t good enough, don’t know enough: not to protect Steve from his own traitor-bones.
So Bucky doesn’t need to be a doctor.
He needs to be something better.
______________________
The notice that comes in the mail: Bucky’s not sure it makes him something better.
But it’ll make him something, and maybe that’s enough.
______________________
Bucky doesn’t come home late, not really—and he tries to tell himself that he needs to soak it in, the walk up the stairs, the slide of the key in the lock, the creak of the door and the scent of their apartment: musk and pomade and the cloy of broth from last night’s dinner: and Steve, the scent that’s all Steve and Bucky might never get to know again, and he doesn’t dwell on that, he doesn’t, he doesn’t ‘cause he can’t—Bucky doesn’t come home late. He’s gotta be up and gone, come sun-up.
He tries not to think about how he wants to breathe this place, this moment, this space and the person he shares it with that makes it home: he tries not to think about how he wants to breathe it in and keep it, but he can’t even make his lungs stretch for the inhale. It hurts too bad.
He shucks his clothes and crawls quiet, distracted into bed.
There’s a heat there, a familiar body already between Bucky’s sheets, though: and he’s not distracted anymore.
He’s real fucking aware of the body in his bed.
“Stevie,” Bucky whispers, not sure why. Steve’s awake. His chest rises and falls evenly, which is a blessing, but too fast for sleep. Bucky doesn’t know why he whispers.
He just knows that he’s got to. Just knows there ain’t no other choice.
Steve doesn’t turn toward him, and Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t shift so their bodies touch—they’ve slept closer, they’ve worn less when it was cold, when Steve’s life depending on it: they’ve done it without a thought, and Bucky can’t speak for Steve, save that Steve woke the next morning, every time, but for Bucky, at least: it was a comfort. It was a comfort to feel heat beside him. It was a comfort to know Steve was breathing, to feel Steve’s heart still pushing on against the odds, stubborn as the man himself—it was a comfort, and Bucky always felt lighter in the morning with Steve still plastered up against him. Bucky always felt a little lesser, when he climbed out of bed to start the day.
They’ve slept closer, they’ve worn less when Steve’s shivered, when he’s needed the warmth, needed it to not give in to the chill in the night.
But it’s the middle of summer, now. It ain’t cold. They’ve worn less, and slept closer when they’ve needed to.
They don’t need to, not now.
Except then Steve reaches—still doesn’t turn, but grabs for Bucky’s hand and pulls, holds it close against his skinny chest, the cut of his ribs through the skin like what’s coming for them’s colder than the frost has ever managed, and Bucky doesn’t know if he’s ever felt Steve’s heartbeat against his palm like this before: he’s caught it pumping heavy out of his nose in too many alleyways to count, raucous and dangerous and like wings in Bucky own chest, in his gut because it’s heavy, but so much heavier than it should be—too much; he’s felt it waning when the pall of death’s drawing too fucking close and Bucky has to step between and curl around and hope and pray and wait until there are more beats than skips in the rhythm, but this.
This, right now—it’s steady, if a little swift. It’s fainter than it ought to be, but it doesn’t falter, and it swells in Bucky’s chest because who’ll be there to keep Steve warm come winter? Who’ll make this heart the center of everything, who’ll give Steve everything he deserves, all that Bucky tries to offer until Steve finds the one he’s meant for, until Steve gets the person whose dips and divots he’s meant to match?
Bucky rests his head in the crook of Steve’s neck and breathes, makes himself breathe because he needs to remember this. He cannot forget.
“Promise me you’ll stay safe,” he whispers, doesn’t expect a reply.
He doesn’t get one. For the best, probably. They’re not liars. Not to each other; ain’t no fuckin’ use, between the two of ‘em. It hurts more than it ever helps.
They always know.
“Promise me you’ll keep lookin’,” Bucky says, turns his head away from Steve’s neck and speaks straight to the shadows because there are things he needs to say, can’t die with ‘em still on his tongue, because Steve’s everything that matters, and Bucky doesn’t think he’ll see him after this night and there are words that are forgiven in the darkness. There are confessions to be made that can’t be seen.
“Stevie, if she’s out there,” Bucky shakes his head, hair brushing sloppy across Steve’s shoulder. “Soulmate or not, Stevie, you gotta try, because you deserve someone who sees you, who looks at you and knows you’re the best of ‘em all,” Bucky gets the words out just before his throat tightens, before his voice cracks around something hollow, something broken in his chest that he can’t name, but probably wouldn’t either, if he could.
“You gotta promise you won’t sulk here alone and let yourself just,” Bucky slides down so that his forehead rests at Steve’s shoulder blade, and he gives himself permission to breathe, just to breathe—his hand never leaves the feel of Steve’s heartbeat, and he gives himself permission for that, too.
Just this once.
“Promise me you’ll keep lookin’, and if you find her, that you won’t let her go.”
The rhythm under Bucky’s hand does something funny, then, and it squeezes in Bucky’s chest like an omen, like a threat because Steve’s the strongest person Bucky’s ever known and just because his body doesn’t understand that doesn’t mean shit, except it does, it does and he can’t leave Steve, he can’t, he—
“Stevie—”
“I promise.”
It’s soft, and it’s more a sigh than it’s speech, really, but it’ll do, and Bucky exhales, and Steve’s heart’s decided on a beat again and it’s okay, it’ll be okay.
It has to be okay.
“I promise, if I find the right partner,” Steve’s grip on Bucky’s hand tightens, the vow of it made close, if still so quiet: “I won’t let ‘em go.”
Bucky nods, just nods, because his voice is somewhere caught in the way his own heart’s hurting when it moves, in the way it’s all too big, too lost, too important, too much.
“Take care of yourself,” Bucky exhales low, because he needs something to drown out the pounding in his ears that feels too loud, too deep: “while I’m gone.”
Steve snorts, humorless. “You’re one to talk,” he hisses, and Bucky feels the catch of his breath that cuts short the words that follow.
“Just, don’t,” Steve swallows hard. “Don’t...”
Bucky nods, let’s Steve feel it. “I’ll do my best.”
He understands what can’t be said. What never needed to be said, between them.
“I know you’re still lookin’ for your soulmate,” Steve’s voice is almost too small to hear, but Bucky feels it. Knows its shape and seeks it, grasps for it and holds it too close to ever get lost, and don’t say a goddamn word because he doesn’t care about his own soulmate—he’s not sure he ever really has. He’s okay with what life gives him, mostly, and the girls he’s had were always swell, even if they were never more than a hint at how people talk about lungs filling in time when he’d breathe heavy over ‘em, of blood pumping like a chorus when he’d suck their lips: they’ve come and gone, and that’s okay. It’s always been okay.
Because when they leave, or when he walks, there’s Steve, and Steve, well: God Almighty, but Stevie’s more’n enough of a gift in one lifetime for Bucky. So at the end of the day, soulmate or no, Bucky’s more than happy with what he’s got.
And Bucky goddamn bites his tongue around what he figures he’s about to cross an ocean to get, because he’s a blessed man, make no mistake. He doesn’t know what he thinks about God, really, but Bucky’s been lucky beyond what he’s earned this far because his family is healthy, he’s got a job that pays the bills, if only just, and he knows what it means to be happy. He comes home, and there’s Steve, and it’s probably enough that a man like Steve is real, but that Bucky gets to know him? Gets to make sure he stays out of the worst of the trouble he finds, gets to say goodnight to him before sleep comes, at the end of every fucking day? That’s, that’s—
That’s why if anybody's gotta find their soulmate, it’s Stevie. Because Bucky don’t know what he’d do without a Steve Rogers in the world, and Bucky knows damn well he ain’t enough to keep Steve’s body from double-crossin’ him, to keep Steve tethered to the here and the now, and whatever little bit he’s done, if anything at all: whatever little bit he’s given’ll be gone come morning. And Bucky doesn’t give a shit about soulmates.
Not unless that soulmate is Steve’s.
“And I want you to find her, Buck. I want you to find her so bad ‘cause you deserve to be so happy.”
Bucky’s brought back to the here and now by Steve’s chest’s moving up and down faster than it should, his muscles tense, the one skippin’ under Bucky’s hand most of all, and Bucky bites a sound back down his throat for the feel of it, the way it does wrong things in his own chest to know the strain, the hurt beneath Steve’s ribs.
“But don’t,” and Steve’s voice breaks, and Bucky’s pulse hammers hard for it, trips over something kneading and fretful and untethered in his veins that makes it shake.
“Don’t forget what you already got, okay?” Steve barely whispers, but it’s a heavy enough thing, in the asking, that the weight makes up for the still. “It’s not much, and it’s nothing like the same—”
And Bucky can’t help it, can’t bear to hear Steve speak like that about himself, about them: he can’t help it when he slips his left hand ‘round to hold Steve around the middle, to clasp atop the hand Steve’s holding to Bucky’s own against the middle of his chest. Bucky can’t help but clutch him close and stay whatever else Steve wants to say because this is it. This is all that’s left, and Bucky’ll be damned if he leaves it lay like this.
He’ll be damned.
“Never,” he bites out, shrill and sharp and choked down the seam of it. “Not ever, you hear me?”
And he doesn’t want to let go of Steve, but he moves a hand to Steve’s cheek and turns his head to face Bucky, and there’s not much to see in the pitch black of night but he can feel it, and he knows Steve can too when he breathes out:
“To the end of the line, Stevie. I meant that. I still mean it. You got me?”
And he does mean it, he always did, and he means all the things wrapped up in those words, all the deeper things, the secret things: too big and strong and too bright to risk even telling to the dark.
Steve’s eyes catch a stray beam of light, and he wishes he could read what they’re telling him, but he can’t, he can’t focus on that and memorize the shade of them, the shape of them, all the little things that need to never stray, and as Steve turns back and Bucky’s hand resumes its place upon Steve’s chest, they both know Bucky’ll leave before Steve wakes in the morning. They both know that much.
Steve breathes, and Bucky feels the beat space out, almost resigned, and he knows the feeling in his own veins, just now: he knows it close and dear and somehow it’s still peaceful. Somehow, it makes him brave when eventually Steve whispers back:
“I got you.”
______________________
“Does it hurt?”
Dum Dum turns toward Bucky at the question, profile lit by the fire.
“What,” he drawls; “my fucking balls freezing off?” he smirks, snuffs out the butt of his smoke as he reaches for another, makes a shrug out of what the rest of them give into as a shiver: “Yeah, little bit.”
“No, dumbass.” Bucky leans and offers Dugan the light from his zippo. “Leavin’ her behind.”
‘Cause Bucky’s curious. And Dum Dum’s the only one of ‘em to leave not just a girl behind, but the one. He left half his everything back in the States, and Bucky’s always wondered if it was as bad as some people talked about—like breathing with only one lung, like losing a limb, like bleeding from the center with nothing to staunch the red: Bucky’s always wondered, and maybe it ain’t polite to ask.
But they’re gettin’ shot at every day, and Bucky hasn’t had a letter from Steve in more weeks than his heart can rightly take, so. He’s not much sure he cares about polite.
“Hurt?” Dugan drags in long. “Naw, not really. It’s more,” he blows out the smoke, chalky in the night: “Lonely.”
And Dum Dum’s quiet, for a moment, breathing the smoke and the dark deep into his lungs, and Bucky shuts his eyes longer than he strictly needs to on a blink, just to savor the look of Stevie with the cigarettes for his asthma caught between red lips, breathing slow and steady, just like he ought to: Bucky shuts his eyes and lets himself have that moment of still before Dugan speaks again.
“It’s more like you can’t keep looking for a thing that's too far to find,” and he sounds thoughtful, and far away himself: deeper, and more real, somehow, than Dum Dum ever lets them see. “Something like that.”
“Hmmm,” Bucky hums, and lights up, himself; and that’s not so bad, really. Lonely. Feeling like you just wanna reach out and touch a thing that’s longer, so much longer than your reach.
If that’s all that happens when your soulmate’s far away, then hell, Bucky don’t feel near as bad about it, now.
S’no different than the rest of ‘em, really.
______________________
When they’re taken captive, Bucky keeps calm. He’s no stranger to bullies. He’s not unpracticed in maneuvering out of scenarios against an enemy that’s bigger, that’s stronger, that’s got more firepower and a longer reach. Better even than the army, maybe; better than experience on the ground, it’s Steve who trained him well, for this work.
So when they start pickin’ off his people, his men: he was never going to do anything but throw his body in front of the fist where it fell. He wasn’t ever going to duck and hide to save his own skin.
In the dark, all the men beside him in these cages, in this prison: in the dark, they all wear Stevie’s face, and Bucky never thinks twice about the way the weasley man with the round glasses smiles too fucking big when Bucky goes, full-weight in front of Falsworth who he barely knows, just knows he won’t see a good man go down before he does; shoves Dugan down and lets them drag him out, lets them struggle at the expense of his own ankles, his own bones because he wants it to hurt on both ends, he wants it to mean something when they take him away to die.
He wishes, now, more than anything in the world, that they’d taken him away to die.
The slab they call the operating table, the slab they call The Chair. The slab where he’s at the wrong angle to spit in their faces without it coming back at his own, but just the right angle for the beam in the contraption on the ceiling to hit him straight in the center of his eye, blinding, penetrating deeper than what he sees and into what he knows until it’s only what he thinks he knows, what he might not know, what he might have imagined, what might be a dream—
The things they do to him. The things they do to him are things that God never meant for man to speak of. God never meant for mortal souls to know words, to find words for the things that they do.
And Bucky isn't sure, was never sure where he stood regarding the question of God, really—wasn’t never sure whether he could buy that there was a God who'd make Steve so weak, who’d try to take him away, or if maybe, instead, he had to praise a God who at least gave Steve just enough strength to hold, and to keep holding on beyond all measure: Bucky still isn't sure about God.
But in this, like this: he has seen the Devil, and he damn well knows the depths of Hell.
They put things in his veins that burn, that freeze, that shake: he doesn’t want to think about the pounding in him, because it’s too fast and hard to be a heartbeat, he wouldn’t be alive anymore if it was his own heart, he wouldn’t—and he is alive, he’s pretty sure. It hurts too much to be anything else.
When he can think, when he can think before they take it away from him, before they make him question and wonder and second-guess: he worries, he worries enough for the pounding to ratchet up even higher and that always brings them closer, makes them curious, the fucks—but Bucky worries that whatever they’re doing is changing him. He feels different. His blood, when it moves, is a thing he can track: thicker. His lungs sometimes take in too much air, and move so slow; and sometimes he’s panting, like he doesn’t even breathe the same stuff he used to, like whatever he needs lives elsewhere. Is different.
And like he said: he doesn’t want to think about his heart.
But if he’s frightened by the pounding, and how fast and hard it runs, what scares him even more is a thing he’s never thought to fear.
What scares him even more is whether they’re changing him enough that, if he does have a soulmate somewhere, he won’t match them anymore. They won’t know him. They’ll both end up missing each other on the street, if Bucky ever leaves here. If he survives to walk down a street ever again.
Bucky suspects, in the spare moments between, that he should probably focus on the last bit of that, the if that ain’t ever gonna come; Bucky suspects if he focused on that bit, it’d be easier.
But the laser-light turns on, then, every time, and more fire shoots through his veins, and he never gets that far.
He doesn’t ever get that far.
______________________
When it comes, he isn’t ready. And when it comes, it's just a trick: he’s sure of it.
But he still isn’t ready.
It’s a trick, because they’re not human, they don’t feel, and they’ll use whatever’s there, they’ll take whatever’s left, they’ll reach into his chest and squeeze the pummeled thing to keep him aching, keep the blood moving for them to draw—so it’s a trick, and there’s a part of him that knows it, but that part’s almost dead.
And if this isn’t a trick, then it’s almost certainly the end—for real, this time, after so many nights and days he can’t separate or track; this time, if it isn’t a ploy in their game to break him, to take the numbers and the name from his tongue, if it’s not a cruel device to remind him that he’s owned, that he’s no longer a man, no longer a soul of his own, that he belongs to them for all that he’s locked himself away and tried, he has tried to keep something safe, just in case of a miracle—he has tried, but if it’s not a trick, then it’s dying, and it’s either mercy or the swift hand of judgement that fools what’s left of his mind into holding it close when it comes, either way, and Bucky still doesn’t know what he thinks about God.
But Bucky knows. Bucky knows that this is what the angels sang of, what the saints saw behind those holy eyes: this is what it feels like, Bucky knows, to be whole again, not just a balm against the jagged edges he’s been torn to, but this is what it is to know that you could be better, could be more inside the grasp of something bigger, something warmer. All the notes inside the tune that only you could know because it wasn’t a thing to be heard, no.
It was a blessing to be felt.
And the slab’s still hard on his back. And he knows the marks in his veins where they’d taken the needles, the long tubes leading in and tracing out: he knows they’re gone already, but it all still aches. And his heart’s still a mallet, still a shiver in the snow and he doesn’t understand how his blood pumps so damn hard if the beating’s so fucking swift, doesn’t know how it means a damn thing when his lungs barely take any air, he hasn’t known since he got here, since it started and wouldn’t fucking end, far after it should have fucking ended—it’s all the same, there’s nothing different, and he can’t barely see out from his eyes, wide as they are, blurred as they gaze but he knows that nothing out there is difference, and it’s a trick, they’ve dug too far, they’ve toyed too deep and it’s a lie, but oh, Christ, dear God—
His heart’s pounding, racing, tripping, but there’s something else: slow to build but solid, gentle, like arms around his shoulders and heat against his skin. His heart’s flailing, but there’s something there, growing fast, and it’s not calm itself, it’s not sure or slow but it’s strong. It’s strong and unyielding and unwavering and it is reaching: and it’s a physical thing, the sensation of it. It’s a tangible knowledge that wraps around the thrashing muscle in his chest and strokes like a fingertip, long and artful and dear: strokes and whispers without any words in the language of cells and strings and the universe as it hums—and Bucky feels himself shudder, head and toe against his shackles when it settles like a cover, like a need, like a joy around the way his heart’s been straining: a new beat, leading. Asking. Pleading, and Bucky doesn’t know why, but he’s only alive, still, he thinks—he’s only here at all because he was made to follow it.
And when he does, when he exhales and his heart still shakes but feels safe in it, held for it somehow: when he follows, when he gives, his lungs follow suit, and where tension kept him gasping, where fear kept him on the brink of the dim he doesn’t even have to lift his chest so steep to taste the sweetness of what it means to breathe, to live—it’s relief and release and a freedom in chains, and it is every gift that Bucky Barnes has ever failed to earned made small enough to course through his veins, bright and neither fire nor ice, but rightness, trueness, all that he is and has been and will be, braided through with something unknown, offered but somehow still far, familiar but unknown, and Bucky’s known what it means to have a full heart with affection, with longing, with protection or aching but this, this—
No. No.
Bucky takes the pain that’s receding to the edges, the tatters left of his mind and he grasps for it, clings to it, concentrates and brings it back to bear upon him as fiercely as he can, wrestles his lip between his teeth and his fingernails against the tender give of the lines in his palms and he presses, bites, digs until thick blood trails out, until the soft caress of the enemies' lies in his chest, in his head, in his veins falls short of stopping the pounding in his heart altogether, fails in keeping him from fighting back just this much, just this little bit to root in the present, in the now: alone, so very much alone and that is good, that is good because it means he saved the others as best he could, and there will be good men to still fight for the world beyond these walls, there will be a war to have won and maybe Bucky won’t see it, maybe Bucky’ll never hug him close and feel him breathe but the world will still turn for Steven Grant Rogers and Bucky is alone, now. And that means his battle is as won as it’s gonna get.
So he bites harder, until he settles. Until the words come back to his tongue and so what if he stumbles, so what if he slurs—so what if the feeling of hands on his body, around the harsh contractions of his heart making them smooth, the touch alone like the Hosts of Heaven itself; so what if Bucky leans into it, takes the lie they’re selling in order to spit back at them with the only venom he’s got left, all the more stubborn, all the more virulent because it’s gotta be, because this is the last stand and they’re trying to take his soul, and there may be nothing left for him, aside from this. There may be no more moments to steal, but he will not give them the satisfaction. He will not let them forge the mate of his entire being and sell fool’s gold to his heart, to his self, to his blood and bones, he won’t.
He will not die wrapped up inside so dire a lie.
So he recites his numbers, and he stumbles on his name, and he tastes blood and tells himself against the resonance that’s eating through his mind: it is a lie, it is a lie, it is a lie.
So when he hears footsteps, he knows it’s just a trip inside the falsehood of the twin-beat, the heart behind his own that’s supposed to be reaching, supposed to be matching the pounding, his pulse.
And when he hears the gasping, it’s just the veil parting, it’s just the illusion tearing at seams because there is no heavy-and-heaving-but-holding breath that guides his own, it’s just him: it’s just what’s left to gasp at from long-worn lungs in this hellhole, this torture chamber. This cage.
When he sees the face. When he sees—
His eyes won’t close when he wants them to. His vision won’t clear when he begs for it to sharpen, to make sense of the colors where they match the sound, the voice, that voice—
“Oh my God…”
It’s not real, it’s not real, there is no comfort, there is no soft pressure around trembling chamber of a worn-down heart, there is no breath that shoulders the burden when he cannot draw his own, there is no sun to thin his blood, there isn’t a body that’s too big for the face that hovers before him, the eyes that he knows but can’t know, not here, it’s not, it can’t, he can’t, it is a lie—
“Is,” and his tongue drags through blood on his lips when he speaks.
“Is that,” and he speaks without the will to, speaks because his body is keening, is longing, is reaching and he can’t help it, he can’t fight against the untruths that are clawing so deep it can’t be stopped, so deep he can’t even tell if it should hurt or heal or sting like bliss does, like love—
“It’s me.”
And that voice sings through him, the timbre like a whisper and an aria, an anthem and a poem and a lullaby and all of the perfect things, the psalms and the sighs and the rock to which he anchors, and it’s a lie, isn’t it? It can’t be real, this can’t be real...
“It’s Steve.”
Bucky’s lips curve, and joy slips to shape his mouth because it’s impossible. It’s entirely impossible.
But Bucky’s heart’s not pounding. It’s singing praise, it’s overjoyed, it is redeemed and undone and it’s cradled close and taught jubilation, beat by beat, and that’s impossible. It’s entirely impossible.
But goddamnit all—it’s true.
______________________
Once he’s able to piece it all together, he wishes, almost, that he hadn’t.
Because the truth is this—that Buck is blind, was as blind as any of ‘em, any of the naysayers and the doubters and the idiots who wouldn’t understand, who didn’t see, who overlooked, or worse: looked straight into the bright blue eyes of Steven Grant Rogers and couldn’t glimpse the strength of his soul.
And good God, that’s what it always was, has always been about: the soul. The goddamned soul.
And Steve—
Bucky nearly bites through his cigarette, nearly drops the smoke between shaking fingers, half-ash, his mind elsewhere, his heart heavy, but warm, Jesus Christ; he’s not sure he knew the meaning of that word, before—not sure he should have been allowed to use it, to say it before he knew it like this, and Bucky wants to think he’s only as much to blame, as much as fault as the rest of everyone, as the whole of a world too caught up to see beyond the obvious, but he isn’t, he isn’t.
He’s worse.
He throws the cigarette to the ground, wastes what’s left, and takes too many tries to match the end of a new smoke to the flicker of a light, and it doesn’t take the edge off like it should—hasn’t, not since the table, the room, what was done—it doesn’t coat his lungs and settle his nerves, but it’s almost like it doesn’t need to, even if it could: it’s almost as if there’s a hand at his back even when it’s only the wind that curls around him, even when it’s his watch and his breathing makes the only echo to be heard.
He breathes in, and he holds the taste in his mouth, in his chest: lets his heart beat against it and he hones in on the rhythm, the force, the flutter in it—all excitement and devastation and the whole of life and death, the rise and fall, the give and take, and it’s new except that it isn’t. It isn’t new, and he is worse, because his heart is heavy. His heart is warm, and he should never have said the word before he knew what it meant, but he should have known, he should have known.
He should have seen.
Because when Steve was hurting, when Steve was ailing, when Steve was flirting with death so damned close and sure: Bucky felt like he was dying, too. Bucky’s chest would seize up and feel small, feel cold, feel like it was tearing itself apart and he’d reach for Steve beyond the understanding of why, because why did he need a reason to want Steve to live, why did there ever need to be a reason to hold onto to Steve Rogers and never let go?
And so he’d never thought on it. He’d never bothered to even wonder. And more than never seeing the clear, simple truth where it shone out and grabbed him at his core from the first, he never named what was there beyond souls and frequencies that resonated bright and hot between them.
And it had always been love. Bucky’d never named it, but that’s what it’d always been.
The ash hits Bucky’s lips and he lets go of the butt, tastes the bitter and the death on the skin, just there.
When Steve was sick, when Steve was dying, Bucky’d reach for him, the inclination deep, written firm into his bones, and he never once thought about the way he didn’t blink before he took Steve’s hand in his, before he wrapped around Steve’s body and prayed, and breathed, and begged.
And the softness, and the wonder, the shiver-bliss of Steve’s eyes opening, of his pulse steadying, his world come back into focus and color: Steve's smile when he’d catch his breath after a fight, his heart steadying and his eyes gleaming—Bucky’d never bothered to think, never bothered to hold close and really read what it had to mean that Bucky could only breathe when Steve was breathing, that his heart only lost the wince, the weight, the noose when Steve’s could tap sure against his ribs, if still not so strong: Bucky hadn’t thought, Bucky hadn’t looked, Bucky’d hadn’t seen.
Bucky’d been a goddamned fool.
‘Cause on the table. In that room. In that place. It hadn’t been a lie.
It’d been a horrid fucking cosmic joke.
Because God Almighty, it’d always been Steve, hadn’t it? And Bucky can blame the fact that Stevie’s lungs were too weak to feel lifting ‘round Bucky’s healthy ones, that Steve’s heartbeat couldn’t echo against Bucky’s with enough force to be known: but Steve’s spirit, the soul in him had been Bucky’s touchstone, his North Star, his focal point and his guiding light and the only home that fit for as long as Bucky can remember, for as long as Bucky’s been unwilling to prod any of those truths too far.
It was Steve. It is Steve. His soulmate.
And then there’s Bucky, who wasn’t enough, who isn’t enough, and who goddamn fucking well won’t be, because when Steve needed a soulmate to tether him, to keep him safe, to make him well: when Steve needed the match for his everything to be there, to keep a fist from draining blood out his nose, or a kick from cracking his bones, or a sickness from stalling his blood, from stuffing his lungs, from straining hard against his already stretched-thin heart, Bucky’d been nothing but a warm body grasping at straws: nothing. Nothing.
And now: now, where Steve never needed a savior, he’d used to need an anchor. Now Steve, who everyone sees, finally, but they don’t all see—when Stevie gets his soulmate, finds his true match, his everything and then some, when Stevie finally has everything he’s always been meant to have, it’ll be not for the saving of his body, the steadying of his pulse, no.
It’ll be for the joy of breathing, the thrill of a bounding heartbeat made of bliss, and Bucky will watch, and he will smile, and Bucky’ll know there’s a God who is good, because Steve is well, and Steve is loved, and Steve is breathing and he’s happy and he’s whole.
And Bucky’ll know there’s a God who kept him from dying on that table for a reason.
To watch, and to know what it means to be a blind fucking fool; what it means to overlook a miracle.
Either that, or there ain’t no fucking God that cares for any of it; but there’s Steve.
And because there’s Steve, Bucky’ll always give Heaven the benefit of the doubt.
______________________
When he sees Peggy Carter, Bucky knows.
Bucky knows, and it crushes him.
The way she speaks to Steve, the way her eyes look not at, or through, but in, into the center of the man, the miracle of Steven Rogers; and the way Steve looks at her, the way he was always saving, Bucky suspects. He glances up their bodies, reads their postures, and he can almost sense the way their selves entangle, metaphysical and beyond feeling but he can see it, somehow: how they mingle. How they fit.
And it crushes him. Entirely.
But it’s the fact that he’s selfish enough for it to crush him in the first place: that’s the thing, in truth, that kills him.
Because who is Bucky, really, to ask for what he’s ignored for so long? To beg the universe for a thing he wants like a child, selfish and pining, throwing a tantrum between his own goddamn bones because he saw, too late, what his heart beat to feel, to have, to know?
And more than that, so much fucking more than that: how terrible of a person, how useless of a friend is he to want, where he can’t provide, where he can’t give in turn, where Steve would be less, unfulfilled in meeting Bucky in the middle where he aches, where he feels more than he’s ever felt, now—in Steve’s presence, in Steve’s proximity, knowing the resonance and feeling Steve’s every breath on some level he can’t name, so strong and so healthy and real and full but still far, still not quite there—and more isn’t better, exactly, more hurts where less was static, and Bucky deserves that; no.
No, Bucky will weather that proudly because he loves Steve, and he was too damned oblivious to notice, to say it, to own it and hold it to his chest and breathe it in like it deserved, and Steve is everything. Steve deserves everything and Bucky falls goddamn short.
When he sees Peggy Carter, it crushes him, because she is wonderful. She is beautiful. She is fire and steel and he hears how she believed in Steve before, saw everything that Bucky saw but didn’t understand. It crushes him, because she is everything. And Steve deserves everything.
So Bucky swallows the bile that rises when he thinks about it too hard—what wasn’t lost, but more was never going to be his to lose at all; Bucky swallows that violent thing that comes up and threatens to kill him, every time Steve smiles at him like nothing’s different, like nothing’s changed and Bucky had to smile back and agree when he knows—when Bucky thinks they both know it’s not, they both know it’s changed and there was a loss had somewhere that cannot be undone; Bucky smirks back, and snarks sharp, calls Steve punk when no one’s listening, when he wants nothing more than to reach, than to touch. He swallows it down.
He swallows it down and he bites his goddamn tongue, and the blood is a trick, from a slab in the center of hell.
It’s a trick that they taught him, and it serves.
______________________
In truth, as the weeks drag into months, and they face Death enough to recognize the look in his eyes, to almost call him a friend: in truth it’s a comfort, the feeling of Steve in everything that Bucky is, in his veins, at the bottom of every breath and the beating heart he lets guide his shots—but then also in the spaces, in the spots between. His world is colored with Steve, always has been, but this: this is something, this is tasting forbidden fruit and Bucky’d spent too many nights that should have cut through him colder than they did wrestling with whether it would’ve been better to never have had a hint of it, to never know the longing that’d never be fulfilled, or if a glimpse, the lilt on his tongue as he inhaled: whether that was enough.
And that’s how he comes to terms with it, because when a bullet grazes close, it’s Steve that keeps him steady, keeps him grounded—and more than that: when Steve does something stupid, something unforgivably, idiotically heroic except it’s not fucking heroic, it’s just goddamn dumb; when Steve’s presumed dead in an explosion, or lost in a fight, Bucky just has to close his eyes and wait, focus, feel—Bucky doesn’t have to wonder, doesn’t have to leave his heart to break because he can feel the strength in Steve’s pulse and the breath in his lungs and he knows.
He knows.
And so Bucky makes his peace with what he can and cannot have. He makes his peace the best he can and he does thank whoever, whatever is listening that he gets what he does, that he’s allowed even this much, because he’s a damned fucking fool, a jerk, a moron and a wreck but he’s Steve’s jerk, and Steve’s heart was always so big, and now it’s just as strong as it always should’ve been, and Steve’s the most selfless fuck in the history of being, and whether he knows that Bucky clings to the feel of him, to the life in him like a goddamn parasite, Steve shines like the sun and gives warmth, gives life wherever he can reach, even where he doesn’t get it back in return, and Bucky basks in that fact.
Bucky is grateful for that fact, more than he is guilty.
Steve’s close enough to him here, now, that Bucky can feel his exhales on his skin, not just in his chest. And if their arms brush when they both breathe, just so, Bucky doesn’t shy from it, or complain. If he’s honest, he tries to anticipate the shiver in his lungs, tries to move so that he touches Steve just lightly, just enough: so that it all sparks through his body: not flesh to flesh but contact through layers, accidental but still powerful, and Bucky thinks back to nights wrapped up around each other, Brooklyn murmuring around their bodies—he thinks, and he longs a little, except now Stevie is everything he ever wanted to be. Now Steve has everything he was always meant to have.
Bucky breathes in, and their arms brush, and goddamn: it’s enough. More than.
“Gonna hit the hay,” Bucky exhales slow, slaps his palms to his knees and hauls himself up. Steve stands with him, and Bucky should tell him not to bother, not to leave the group, the warmth near the fire: they’ve got a big day tomorrow. Taking down a train. Getting that fucker who thought it was fun and games to play with Bucky’s mind. To try to kill his soul.
Bucky should tell him to stay. But it’s Steve who’s the selfless one. Not Bucky.
Bucky doesn't say a word, and Steve follows Bucky close enough that Bucky can’t even tell where his own pulse begins, for the way Steve’s curls around the feeling, and oh.
Shit, but that’s gorgeous, and Bucky wonders what it’d be like to give that to Steve right back, to share it, rather than steal it.
Bucky wonders, but not for long. Doesn’t let himself linger in those thoughts for too many moments. Can’t allow for it to fester; can’t allow himself to dwell.
It happens before he thinks about it, before he can stop himself. He removes his glove and reaches, just for a moment. It’s bare hand to clothed shoulder, but he holds it for a moment longer than he should, and then another, and Steve doesn’t say a thing, just looks at him, and Bucky loses himself in those eyes, thinks maybe it’s not losing if he’d left himself inside that blue years ago—maybe now, it’s finding, but it doesn’t matter, none of it matters because Bucky feels his body come alive, feels his heart skip like a record between songs, finding a groove that suits and it’s magnificent, is what it is, and Bucky lets himself linger in it, and Steve doesn’t pull away.
Bucky doesn’t let himself even try to read what Steve’s thinking, what his gaze is giving away; just lets himself feel, lets his lungs drink their fill and his blood soak this in and and oh, but it's everything; it is exquisite even as it is agony and Bucky breathes, breathes.
Makes himself let go.
“Night, Stevie,” he whispers. And that’s all that needs saying.
Before sleep takes him, though, Bucky thinks, ‘cause it’s dark, and in his own mind he can say it, in his own mind he can own the feeling, the need, the yearning. Before sleep takes him, Bucky thinks: I should have reached again, once more.
Just in a case.