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First time it happens, he’s no more than twelve, a tiny thing filled with spit and fire and not nearly enough self-preservation to survive in the rough-and-tumble streets of Brooklyn.The big kids have him trapped in a corner between Mrs. O’Reilly’s overflowing garbage cans and the wooden fence that blocks the alley’s end; he’s swinging his fists, no power behind his hits, hoping to leave any kind of mark, when the hand closes around his wrist and yanks him free. The new boy, taller with wide shoulders, punches Jack Wales right in the nose with a satisfying crunch of bone then kicks Marty Derry in the knee until Marty starts crying and limps away, Jack helping him walk.
The burn shouldn’t get noticed between his black eye and the bloody lip, but it’s different and new and little Steve Rogers has heard the stories about what that means. His Ma always told how she met his dad walking down the street; she dropped an apple from her bag, he handed it back and their fingers brushed. She’d show Steve all the time, the spot inside the fold of her elbow where a miniature daisy bloomed, no more than an inch across, and how his dad had a matching one on his left foot. Didn’t matter that it was gone, after shots of rot gut whiskey, long hours of work, and his Ma’s complete exhaustion. They don’t stay, she’d whisper as she ran her fingertips over the unblemished skin. The bloom of love always fades.
Later, at home, he finds it on his right hip, a small five point star, only a black outline. He wonders where James Buchanan “Call me Bucky” Barnes’ mark is, if he’s running a fingernail over it to see if the edges were raised or flush to the skin. If he’s thinking, “why him” or “what’s next” or “why me.” If he’s torn on the inside like Steve because, as much as he wants to be loved, what he really needs is a friend. Maybe he’s realizing that this is what life is, what he needs always at odds with what he wants. After all, who’d want a scrawny sick kid like Steve?
Next day, he slides his chinos on, covers the mark, hangs out with Bucky at the corner, and never says a word.
He gets what he needs, a friend who sticks by him, is always at his shoulder, towering over him, scaring away the bullies. Unless, of course, Steve goes out on his own or opens his mouth at the wrong time or refuses to go quietly. Then it’s the same old, same old, being called weak and kicked and punched and pushed into walls. The worst are the whispers, the dirty names they use, the suggestions and snickers and tongues wagging. Bucky doesn’t know about those and Steve doesn’t share because to say it out loud would be a kind of confession; instead, he banks the desires, the late-night dreams and pretends he’s not imagining familiar dark hair, blue eyes along with a warm mouth.
They share a bed on cold nights after his mom dies and he loses the apartment because he can’t pay for it and his medicine both. Bucky makes the offer again, and Steve’s cough is too deep, his fever too spiky to say no; they end up in a ramshackle tenement, fifth floor walk up with a stove in the corner that needs coal they can’t afford and has a cracked window in the bathroom. The little star is long gone, first blush of lust washed away by circumstance and fear and the necessities of living. Souls can’t bond when denied and repressed and pushed aside by hunger and pain.
But, once, after Bucky enlists and gets his ship out date, they drink too much of the clear hooch Steve got from Old Man McMurray, lay on their thin mattress with broken springs, and talk. Bucky’s hand strokes Steve’s shoulder, down his arm, across his fingers, and his fears spill out into the space between them, of losing who James Barnes is if he stays and of dying if he goes. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, when Bucky’s arms curl around Steve, his head’s on Steve’s shoulder, tucked into the curve of his neck, and silent tears wetting his skin, the mark flares a second time as Steve lays the lightest kiss he can in Bucky’s hair and pulls him close, skin to skin, until he finally dozes off.
It’s there on his hip, a star of black lines with an inside the color of blood, as Steve waves until the retreating ship is out-of-sight. His induction papers are in his pocket, Erskine’s signature above his own. He never told Bucky about either of them.
Bucky’s not the same, not after Zola and Schmidt and the table, but he’s with Steve and Steve’s not himself anymore either, so they pretend and don’t talk about it as they slog their way through the mud and mire of the Western front. Death is in every sentence they speak, the truth of man’s inhumanity spread across the countryside by gatling guns and bombs and mustard gas. There’s no place for love on the battlefield, not with souls as battered and broken as theirs, or so Steve thinks.
Sometimes, though, Bucky looks at him and Steve wonders if it’s his fault, if Bucky was running from Steve’s clinging neediness or if he wishes Steve had left him on that table or if he hates Steve’s new body and the secrets he kept. But it can’t be any of those, Steve is sure, when Bucky curls up under their shared blanket, buries his nose in the curve of Steve’s neck, and shakes awake from the nightmares that plague them all. It has to mean more than the “childhood friends” line the flacks back in D.C. use to sell war bonds or the “Sarge and Cap” the other Howlies call them.
In the darkest moments, when the trench shakes or the silence of night echoes, Steve almost knows, his fingers tingling from stroking the tiniest sliver of skin where Bucky’s collar stops short of the shaggy length of hair that needs a trim. The mark grows warmer, faint lines behind the star, and, maybe, just maybe, this time he’ll ask. But there’s another H.Y.D.R.A. base and a town to liberate, there’s always someone near, they’re never alone, and then they’re on the God-be-damned train and Bucky’s picked up his shield and the blast knocks him out the side of the car and he’s hanging on but Steve can’t get to him, he’s too far, just a touch too far, and he’s gone, falling …
The mark doesn’t have time to disappear before Steve’s tilting the nose of the plane down and the ice is racing up to meet him and he doesn’t care if he dies because if he lives he won’t be Steve Rogers anymore.
The twenty-first century is filled with the glow of screens -- phones and computers and televisions and giant billboards made of thousands of lights in Times Square. Steve would hate it but he’d have to feel something to do that and he’s numb, so God damn icy to his core and can’t work up enough energy to care. And yet, in the midst of the disorienting rush of information and images, he makes friends, real friends, a feat that surprises him the most of all the changes. Hell, one of them is Howard Stark’s son and Steve hates him at first but Tony’s sass and his bravado remind him of himself as a kid, and Steve stops trying to save Tony and finds they get along really well. They fight the Chitauri together and win, sort of, for the moment, then they get to know each other more and Steve’s living in a Brooklyn he doesn’t recognize with an apartment that has air conditioning for God’s sake, and he eats Thai food with a Norse god and a Russian assassin and a guy who turns into a big green monster and how is this his life?
By accident one day, after a particularly exhausting team training exercise, Steve sees Clint coming out of the showers and is mesmerized by the purple and black mark that winds up his left side, from knee to under his arm. Bends and curves, the pattern is intricate and beautiful, celtic scrollwork with vibrant color. Steve wants to ask, but he can’t get the words out until later when Natasha tells him how Clint and Phil circled each other, finally accepted their connection, and built a life together. How the mark grew over time, darkened, gave them strength. How it sustains Clint now, with Phil’s loss weighing on them all, when he traces the lines and remembers, relying upon that foundation to do what Phil asked, to keep going, make the Avengers a reality to honor his name.
That night, Steve lays on his bed, brand new firm mattress in a room with temperature control, and he swears he can feel Bucky curled next to him. He rubs the empty spot on his hip, wraps his arms around a pillow, buries his nose into the soft down, and cries until his throat hurts and his head aches, but that doesn’t stop the memories from coming in fractured dreams of back alleys and cold feet and muddy roads. He wishes he hadn’t been so scared, so weak, so unsure. Wishes he knew if Bucky had a mark too or if it was Steve’s imagination that turned those glances into dreams of more.
In the morning, Steve rises, scrubs his face, showers, and goes on. There’s no one left to tell.
The pain lances through him when he stares into those familiar eyes and asks, “Bucky?” When he’s on his knees, gun to his head, he should be thinking of how to get Sam and Nat out of this but his brain is caught up in the burning as the mark grows, flaring back to life. Sam’s warning goes unheeded because Steve’s sure, he knows Bucky, and he’s damn well not throwing away this chance. Even bleeding out from a gut shot, the ship is falling to pieces around him, Steve doesn’t care where Bucky’s been, what’s he’s done, why he’s alive, only that he’s here, now, and Steve has a chance. “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line” and the floor splinters and Steve’s falling and it’s D.C. but it’s snowing and the train rattles on while the carrier breaks up above him.
He chases Bucky across continents like always; he can admit that now, how it’s always been Bucky he was looking for. Steve’s waking up from a dream or he’s stepping into one, he’s not sure, just that Bucky’s out there and Steve’s going to find him and tell him and … he’ doesn’t know what comes next, only that he wants this, with every fiber of his soul, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. Of course, it’s Bucky who finds him because this time, this far too late but one sliver of opportunity, Bucky doesn’t run. He simply shows up one day in the grimy hotel room Steve and Sam are using as base in the Philippines, taking up too much space with his wide shoulders and his shaggy hair that needs a trim. Sam slips out and Steve can’t speak, unable to form a single word, so he tugs up his shirt and pulls down the waistband of his jeans until the silver circle, lines, and top of the blood red star can be seen. Bucky lifts the hem of his tattered henley and there, nestled in the small of his back are circles, red and blue with a white star in the middle.
“I’m not Bucky,” he says. “I’m broken.”
“Me too,” Steve admits. “I don’t know who I am.”
They don’t have any rot gut whiskey and they can’t get drunk anyway, so they sit on the edge of the bed and talk in fits and starts. Every noise startles Bucky and Steve yearns to touch but that will come later after they start the work of patching up their souls and building a firmer foundation from the bits and pieces of the past and possibilities of the future. For now, they’re together in the same place, Steve has shown him, and that’s a start.
He catches Peter staring at the mark that extends from mid-thigh up his ribcage, an intricate dance of interlocking circles lines, and overlapping stars, dark red and silver and black, and he gives the kid a smile of encouragement. He knows about the first girl and the terrible way that ended and how Peter blames himself for putting her father in prison and how quickly the mark faded. Natasha told him all about M.J., and Peter’s unsuccessful attempts so far at turning the friendship into something else. He should give the kid some advice, tell him it takes time and hard work to build a bond as strong as his and Bucky’s, one that will last the vagaries of life … and the stupid choices people make to run away or deny their soul’s desire.
But he doesn’t say anything because Phil comes in with Clint close behind and they’re arguing about Clint going to medical, a fight Phil always wins, and Tony’s shouting about ordering pizza and Thor and the Hulk are singing that song about getting up again and Steve is distracted by Bucky slamming shut his locker, ready to go, giving him that look, the one Steve knows means he’s struggling with the Winter Soldier today. Peter will figure it out, Steve thinks, he’s a smart kid.
Instead, he commanders the loveseat, curls up around Bucky, buries his nose in the crook of Bucky’s neck and runs his fingers across the sliver of bare skin where his shirt rides up as he kisses the place where shaggy hair touches the collar of his soft henley, and they eat three pizzas on their own as the others come and go and eat and laugh and fill the room.
That night, Steve tells him for the one thousand and twenty-seventh time.
Bucky shows him in return.
And the colors deepen on another circle.