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Steve loves Bucky.
In this strange cold-glass world that rises above him to graze the clouds, it is one of the only things of which he is certain.
He is born of a mother whose superstition painted the walls of their small apartments. Whose sturdy hands carved creatures from blocks wood; left red chillies on peeling windowsills; hung horseshoes from beside crosses; sewed four leaved clovers into the hems of their clothes.
"The things we believe in and the things we don't, Steve. We are defined by them, whether we admit to it or not."
In this world of ice and blood, her superstition is his. And he wears it in the crease of his brow, the holy rosary around his curled fist.
He is his mother; her superstition is his. And he carries it in the locket around his neck. In the grainy pictures of Peggy and Bucky he knows he will be lost without, a talisman that begs evil not to touch him.
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Steve loves Bucky.
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Steve loves Bucky.
He has since they were but an idea of the universe. Stars and dust with the sole purpose of drifting through infinite nothing.
He loves him from the broken and breaking frame of his crooked skeleton. To the rough-raw skin he wears as if he is made of wary regret. To the broken-scarred tips of his fingers and the wrinkles cut into his face.
He has since homes of dark and shadow. Since bloodied knuckles and scraped feet bare feet, sweat drenching palms and dotting foreheads, back alleys and their rising-crumbling walls.
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Steve loves Bucky.
In these ice-and-powder winters that are the same winters of his youth, it is one of the only things he knows for certain.
He is victim to the memories whose brittle touch ravages at the beaten cavern of his mind. Whose eager-fingered hold presents bitter memories as gifts, gems to be cherished or discarded.
"You're not gonna die on me, are you, Stevie? Not before we get hitched."
In these dust-frost winters that rattle his bones, the jagged spaces in between, the memories hold him as his master. Hold him as his salvage.
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Steve loves Bucky.
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Steve loves Bucky.
Their broken-frozen-beaten bones are leaves fallen from the same skeleton tree. Lifeless arms and sightless eyes and lipless grins, they find each other.
Their weight burdened backs are bent in the same mangle of tangles and knots.
Their exhausted old souls are whispers of the same century. Tired accents that grind in their mouths and voices that do not work properly and laughs that do not sound right.
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Steve loves Bucky.
In the ruins and spreads of cities.
In the middle of a war; a battle; a fist of silver and steel and its violent kiss to the curve of his stubbled cheek.
In the stretch of a foreign land. In the series of towns unknown and villages barely seen— one after the next and blurring into each other. Welcoming the pound of their running feet.
In ashes clinging desperately to strands of hair, to clothes. Crawling up noses. Flying behind eyes, beneath lids, around lashes.
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Steve loves Bucky.
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Steve loves Bucky.
In languages he wishes to breathe into existence. And colours only etched in the cords of his veins, in the blood that pumps through it, that gives him life.
He sits in the warm-cold shadow of his living room. Dusk falls outside his windows, creeps around the edges of blinds and consumes him in its gentle embrace. Calls to him in tones of sweet lullaby.
Sleep lingers on the corners of his mind.
A pair of soft footsteps find him from around a corner, they pause by his chair.
A handknit wool blanket settles over his beaten and splintered body.
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Steve loves Bucky.