Work Text:
You look at him and you’re reminded of words making noise noise noise and none of it making sense.
Words, in a strange foreign strain of English; you look at him, you with your arm stolen from the heavens, your memory stolen from you - he’s beautiful.
He’s sleeping. Soft breaths; his chest rises ever so slightly.
He’s the same as you remembered him, you think. If you’re remembering correctly. Tall. Carved from marble.
You are not. You are cut from coal.
This is not the Steve you fell for. Not the one you fell from the train for; not the one you fell in love for. He’s been altered physically, mentally; but the same, still.
You love him.
He takes your silvery arm with his eyes closed and pulls it across his waist. You give it willingly - he hugs you close to his chest.
You are not the Bucky he fell for. Not the one he risks everything for, falling from their esteem, not the one who offered a home to live in and lips to kiss and love.
You’ve been altered so much. You don’t know how he can, but:
He loves you.
He is impossible, you think, and realize you are an impossibility as well. As unlikely as staying alive through nothing but ice ice ice for decades.
You look at him and there’s a memory:
you are young -
he is young -
you are both, you are both of you whole and yourselves -
there is a book held in your hands, heavy with expectations.
You’re paging through it now, tasting thees and thous on your tongue; he is lovely, struggling with the phrases, unaware he is voicing love in written form.
You say this, now - (present day. Out of the dust of the past.)
He makes a sleepy noise that sounds like your name.
You say this, now - Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.