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As inseparable as they were, of course Steve and Bucky talked about their soulmate marks. Everyone did, and it was a point of pride when you got yours. It meant you were becoming an adult, when those fingerprints appeared somewhere on your body.
Steve’s came in a bit later than the others in his class. Most weren’t surprised; Steve was so tiny, and everyone was waiting for him to have a growth spurt, sure that he’d get them after that. But they appeared, just above his left hip, when he was still his small self. He half-heartedly hated them for coming in; without them, he had a hope that he could still shoot up suddenly. With them, he knew that he was going to remain this size… basically forever.
Bucky’s came in right as they normally do. His were right above his right hip, and Steve’s mother joked that he and Steve were still attached at the hip when she saw where both boys’ marks had come in.
After Steve’s came in, they’d sit on the docks at night, staring at the stars and speculating about their soul mates.
“I’d bet mine’s a beautiful, brunette dame,” Steve said one night, drenched after a summer swim in the Hudson. His shirt had ridden up after he’d come out of the water, and he’d left it be, still trying to cool off in the immense summer heat that made his lungs hurt.
“I hope mine’s blonde. Or maybe brunette. In between would be nice, I guess,” Bucky responded indecisively.
Steve burst out laughing. “You’re just like women with any hair color,” he said, elbowing Bucky with one of those sharp, bony elbows of his. Bucky laughed with him, rubbing the spot on his arm that Steve had jabbed.
“Eh, I guess you’re right. Still, funny where our marks are, right? Bet our soulmates are twin dames,” he said, poking at where he knew Steve’s to be. He hit one of them, accidentally, and stopped with a jolt.
When people tried to explain their first contact with their soulmate’s markings, many described it as like a pleasant electric shock, followed by a warm, fuzzy feeling.
This is exactly what Bucky felt, and he knew what it meant.
“Did you -?” Steve’s blue eyes had gone wide, and he nodded. Bucky lifted his own still-wet shirt, exposing his own markings.
Steve reached for them, but hesitated an inch from touching them. Bucky guided his fingers to the marks, and they fit perfectly, sending that jolt through the both of them again.
Suddenly, everything made sense, which was pleasant - but it also made everything all the more terrifying.
***
They kept it secret in the intervening years between their marks coming in and Bucky going off to war. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once - occasionally they would hear of one kid or another, dragged off to those institutions, who came back far different. Sure, it was rare, but still terrifying all the same.
But once Steve became Captain America, Bucky got even more worried than he had been. Now Steve had the eyes of a lot of government officials on him - what if they found out that there was one flaw in their golden boy?
He thought on the problem for a while, trying his damnedest to come up with a less painful solution than the one he had…. but he couldn’t.
He told him that the serum had just affected Steve so much, that he just wasn’t attracted to him any more, and that his marks had changed. It half broke him to do so, and he knew that it had done the same to Steve - but it had to be done. Steve would go on being their golden boy, and Bucky would fade into the shadows. He knew Steve liked that Agent Carter - perhaps he’d be happy after all this.
****
When Bucky fell from the train, it had been like losing him twice for Steve. He went through the intervening 3 days after the train mission in a haze, and the army had given him a bit of leave, knowing how important he had been to him. Well, not quite, but they’d still given him a good week of leave.
He managed to find the bar that they’d last drank in, bombed as it was. He poured half a bottle of beer out to Bucky, then started in on it himself.
After the third bottle, he knew that it wasn’t going to work with the serum. He nearly cried again at that, the fact that he couldn’t even properly mourn his friend. Even after Agent Carter - Peggy - had found him, dragged him to a hotel, and told him to change clothes, he still wished he had been able to get even a tiny bit drunk - especially when he noticed that his marks hadn’t faded, like they were supposed to when your soul mate died. He knew they hadn’t changed to be Peggy; hers were on her bicep, and his remained as they had since he’d gotten them.
After that, Steve started keeping the marks bandaged. Sure, they weren’t an actual wound - his body healed those, and fast - but they hurt as if they were one. It was as if all the people who he’d ever heard speak out against people like him and Bucky were taunting him, saying they were right, whenever he saw them. Like they were saying “see! Your marks don’t even act like they should!”
Even after the ice, he kept them that way. He used one of the big band-aid pads that he’d seen Natasha and Clint use for bullet grazings. It was better than his old solution, of using bandages provided in his original pack from before the serum.
Not that the others didn’t notice, though. After the Battle of New York, and the blast he’d taken from a Chitauri weapon, he’d hoped that he could blame it on that being slow to heal…. but some of his teammates only grew more worried at that.
“Friend Steven! How is your wound?” Thor asked, as he had every day since the Battle. It was nice of him to worry, really - but Steve felt a bit bad lying to him. Not to mention, he was pretty sure that he was slowly convincing the demigod that he was as fragile as spun glass, which was sure to come back and bite him.
“Oh, it’s doing better! It’s just taking its sweet time, I guess… I suppose I’ll have to remember that I’m allergic to Chitauri blasts,” he said, with a practiced stage smile.
It was obvious that Thor knew something was up - he was a smart guy, and even he knew enough about Captain America to know there was something going on.
Be that as it may, Thor let it slide. He’d been getting better and better at reading people, and Steve was beginning to worry that he may even surpass Natasha. Wouldn’t that be a laugh.
***
After seeing Bucky on the bridge, suddenly Steve’s marks made sense. He’d noticed that sometimes they’d fade to a grey or even nearly disappear, but now those made sense, as did the fact that they never disappeared when Bucky had fallen from the train. When Steve looked at them after the bridge, the marks had gone from a medium grey to nearly the black that they usually were.
***
After fishing him out of the water (some voice in the back of his head thought “half-drowning himself, like usual”), the Winter Soldier dragged his mission ashore.
He wasn’t entirely sure of why he’d done it - sure there was… something new/old awakening, but it still hadn’t entirely made sense to save his target.
Part of him felt glad to see the target spit out the water of the Potomac on his own. Then, that part took more of the reins, while the Winter Soldier watched.
Half-hesitantly, his hand grabbed the target’s ( Steve’s , thought the currently-in-control entity) hand, and brought it to his right hip. He unbuttoned a few of the bottom straps on the shirt of the tactical suit, and brought the hand to the marks there. He’d half-forgotten that they were there, the meaning erased from his mind. But the other voice insisted that these were important . The target - Steve’s? - hand was brought to the marks, and a pleasant jolt went through him. He felt safe, and warm, for just a second afterwards. Then the hand was dropped, the buttons re-done, and the other voice stood them up, and walked them off.
His face hurt, and he realized he was smiling, for the first time in…. as long as the Winter Soldier could remember.
His fingers fit the marks, just as they always have, the other voice said, by way of explanation.
***
Even after Bucky returned (and was Bucky primarily) to Steve, he felt…. off, and distant. He couldn’t figure it out - Bucky had never been that way before, and even now he felt as though he was holding himself back, trying not to get close. It annoyed Steve, somewhat - he was sure that it was just part of the now-broken programming, and that it would go away with time, but a childish part of him wanted his friend back now , dammit. He was trying to be gentle and slow with him, but it was getting difficult to be that way when the wall showed no signs of coming down.
Also, Steve would catch him, occasionally, staring at his freshly-fixed metal arm with disdain, even hopelessness in his eyes, and comparing it to his flesh-and-bone hand. It would go back behind the wall as soon as he realized Steve was there, but that look in his eyes worried him. He worried that Bucky would destroy the arm again, or try to cut it off, or any number of bad things. If Bucky wanted the arm off, they could work on figuring out how to make that happen, but it would be bad if he tried it himself.
Finally, he got up the courage to ask him about it.
“Hey,” he said, knocking on the doorframe as he entered Bucky’s room. It was sparse, by Bucky’s choice - it looked to Steve like the room of someone who isn’t sure they can stay, but he hadn’t brought that up yet. Bucky was sitting on the bed, and put the book he was reading aside as he came in, swinging his legs over the edge in the same movement. “So… is there something you want to talk about, about the arm?”
Bucky froze, if just for a moment. Then he shifted it a bit, moving the shoulder back and forth and wiggling the fingers. “Nah, it works great! Thank Stark for me - it was really busted when I got here.”
Steve sighed at the obvious lie. “Buck,” he said, taking a seat on the floor in front of the bed, directly in front of Bucky. “I’ve seen the way you look at it when you think you’re alone. Do you want it off, or replaced, or is it something else about it?”
Bucky suddenly looked cagey, frightened, like he had the first day he came to Steve’s apartment. His eyes darted for the door, and Steve’s heart hurt again. He hadn’t meant to spook him like this, and he started to think about just ending the conversation, and leaving Bucky to his own devices, when he sighed.
“No, it’s not that,” he said, suddenly…. sheepish? “It’s just…. you still have your marks in the same place, right?” Steve nodded. “Well… that means that my… my fingerprints won’t fit with the ones you’ve got any more then. It was my left hand, remember? And… well…” he looked at his metal fingers again, the disdain for them back in his eyes. They curled into a fist, one that would have made the knuckles go white and the fingernails of a flesh hand bite into the palm. Instead, a light scraping sound echoed out.
Steve smiled gently. “You don’t know that, Buck.”
“But - even if it changed - they burnt off my fingerprints, Stevie! They’re gone!” Bucky’s eyes were teared up now, and the anger in his voice wasn’t directed at Steve. It was at his past, at what had been done to him. There were so many little, awful things that they’d done to him - some of them he was sure that they still hadn’t discovered.
Steve kept smiling, though his eyes were getting misty now. “So?”
Bucky sputtered for a moment, and Steve lifted his shirt, showing his marks. Now they were heavy and dark - there were no loops, whorls, or arches here. Just solid black.
Steve stood, and hesitantly moved toward Bucky. When he met no resistance, he guided Bucky’s hand to the marks - and the jolt went through both of them, just the same as it always had.