You are, and forever will be, my everything.
#the way he looks at steve #kill me (via marty-mc)
I ficced
The first time he looks at Steve when he’s turning the idea of death over and over, he is naïve. He is a Brooklyn city boy with no idea of the silence the countryside can bring when you least need it, of how a gun works, how he’ll dream that his teeth are made of bullets and every sharp word he bites out explodes in his face like a landmine. He is naïve, and so he accepts the fact that he may die without knowing what it really entails. He thinks maybe it’ll be noble, or quick. He doesn’t know what it’s like to watch men choke slow on their own blood, their faces blurs of agony even through the gas mask. He doesn’t know how long death is, how much it drains of a man until he’s not a man anymore. He doesn’t know a damn thing about what it takes to wear his crisp new uniform, and so he feels safe in himself still.
He only hopes that Steve will remember him, will wonder how he’s doing. Maybe dreams foolishly that Steve will write him letters, long things talking about the things he sees or how he’s doing, never mind that Steve writes letters like telegrams, all short and terse. Hopes maybe Steve would take the time to struggle some words out for him, maybe dream him some of those little cartoons he makes of people sometimes. Those are funny.
He hopes maybe he hasn’t ruined this whole damn night, that Steve will look at him soft still when he’s dead or comes back all quiet and stiff, like his old man was.
He just- he needs to remember that sad, achy look in Steve’s eyes, cause it’s the only thing he’s got left to come home to, and he- he’s a damn coward, but he wants to come home.
-
The second time he looks at Steve after he’s been screaming for the mercy of death for days, now, he wants to laugh. He would laugh, long and breathy and scared, if he had the capacity for it. Steve looks like someone bundled all his big heart and courage and smart mouth and pumped it back into his skinny muscles, made him as big and strong as he always was inside. He hefts Bucky up like he weighs nothing, mouth moving, and Bucky shoots back some comeback, weak for him. But all he keeps thinking is, oh, god. I’m dead. I’m dead, and this is hell, cause everything still hurts and I have to move, and this isn’t Steve, it’s some kinda demon. Of course his demons would look like Steve. He’d follow Steve like a lamb to slaughter, every fucking time, cause Steve is like his guardian angel, fuck what everyone says that it’s the other way around, Steve’s been the only source of good in his whole life, convinced him to work at the docks instead of for gangsters cause it wasn’t right to cheat people and be a bully, never mind their rumbling stomachs.
He looks at Steve, and hopes to God he’ll lead him out of this hell, that he’s real, that they’re both still real, that Steve will guard his soul against whatever they did to him. And failing all that, he hopes that this is real at least for Steve. Steve deserves to be the hero he always tried to be. Steve deserves, fuck, everything.
Yeah that’s good. He’ll settle for that last one. He just wants Steve to have everything he ever wanted.
-
The third time he looks at Steve, he has been the deadly touch of winter in the hearts of men for years. Death is an old familiar fate. His own death is inevitable. He wants it to be here, for once. This mission is worthy to kill him. He won’t make it easy- only, his hands trail off target without his permission until they settle on non-lethal points, steady as ever on a leg or the stomach. He needs to kill this target. He needs to, for other peoples…safety…or…
The why doesn’t matter. The why has never mattered, until suddenly he doesn’t know why he does this, why he beats this man but doesn’t kill him, why his heart is hammering and his face hurts, is moving in ways it never has, why he feels like a dog in a corner when he’s the one with all the cards, why, why, why, why, why this man?
“So finish it,” he says, easy despite how he’s panting, “cause I’m with you til the end of the line.”
Something slots together correctly in his chest, an ache suddenly gone, a hope remembered, or a promise, or sad, achey looks in somewhere yellow.
He can’t fathom what this is, but he knows that this mission is failed.
