when they were just boys, he’d cracked his chest open, bones aching and groaning as he pulled out his heart and placed it into steve’s hands. it was a squishy, malleable thing, warm and pulsing. his lifeblood.
steve had no idea, but the gentle way he cradled bucky’s face after his first fight with patrick brown in third grade sure made it seem like he did. like he was made of something special. one narrow, boney finger tracing the blossoms of purplish blues and the new crook in his already too-big nose like bucky was one of those ancient greek statues, like he was achilles. the gap in his front two teeth showed when steve sucked in a quick breath before running off to get miss sarah. bucky felt the very last bit of him slither into that space.
not much had changed by the night before he shipped out. drunk off a heady whiskey from the shit bar down the bend, flushed and sore from head to toe after one last night dancing with rebecca and the twins, steve a mere few inches from his twitching fingers in the bed. he took everything in him, reaching deep down in his being despite the creaking protesting hums of his bones, and poured it out onto steve’s skin as he slept. the slightly hardened and shapely organ rolling easily into his palm, warm and wet. he tucked it under steve’s arms for safe keeping. there was no room for it where he was headed. he briefly wondered if those bible stories steve was always telling him had any actual weight, because if he was made of anything true it was the bone of steve’s rib.
it was common, a daily ritual at this point. after all, bucky barnes started and ended with steve rogers. spindly artist’s fingers locked around thick callused knuckles, deep ocean blue meeting crystalline gray, two twin broken noses, crumpled newspapers in the toes of boots matching folded sketches in the pocket of an old jacket, the dandelion blonde against mahogany brunette. flimsy wings made for boyish love melting in the heat as he yearned to be filled again with the light of his own personal sun.
bucky often wished he could draw like steve, capture some of that wretched goodness on a page for safe keeping. he didn’t know whether it was good or bad that steve slept through the ghostly press of his lips over his mouth.
when bucky walked up the wooden plank to that army boat the next morning before the pink of the dawn, he swore he felt a singular thin finger trace down his nose; as his heart beat a few miles away clutched tight in red covered sticky arms, in a rundown apartment with a leaky window and a sunshine boy.
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