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even from beyond the grave, bucky remembered what steve told him. not to mourn. not to weep and not to cry.
bucky's heart was breaking every single day. it was breaking when he was packaging sunflowers along side peggy, it was breaking when he was training before being drafted again. bucky tasted metal bloodshot and gun wounds and the pain of that could never compare.
it was steve, he could've had a gashing wound seeping the scarlet blood from his heart and it wouldn't hurt half as much as the void steve left in him.
none the less. bucky didn't cry, he didn't want too. he shook numb until he slept in the same position steve would. bucky believed that the world turned black and white as soon as steves heart stopped beating. he was sleeping the colour throughout bucky's whole life and bucky was miserable without him.
he wasn't given enough time. they could never have been given enough time.
the end of the line. like god had wrapped his cruel hands around steve's puppet strings and cut them from life's hands. snipped through his soul with sickness and death.
bucky will be in love with steve for the rest of his life. until he dies. and when he dies he will make sure to rest next to steve, their graves to be placed next to each others. it was his only wish.
none the less. bucky didn't cry. he didn't weep and he didn't want to die.
he was purely empty. and there had been a note sitting on the fire place of the house for two weeks, it had been two weeks since steve had died. and he couldn't open to it. his hands would shake as he tried to open it, he wouldn't want to ruin the last thing steve created with his own two gentle hands.
until one night. bucky was bathing with a cigarette between his lips. a dirty habit steve didn't care for him to break, it was because he loved him.
he had the note in his dry hands as he carefully opened it. his eyes prickled with tears from the steam heat of the small bathroom. memories flooding of kissing steves pale skin and helping him wash his feeble scalp. his skinny frame heating up red raw from the hot water and bucky's libido.
the note was from steve, obviously. on the front it had written in beautiful cursive.
"for my pal, my buddy, my bucky" bucky giggles gently. he remembered calling steve that before he fell in love with him. he was always in love with him, just before he knew it.
steve's hand writing was beyond perfect, exactly what you would expect it to look like. he curved sketches of small ink sunflowers around his words with fine detail. he truly was an artist.
the letter read:
"to my love, james.
and god i know, it's what you hate to be called, but i do love it. james, it suits you. but so does bucky, it's different. and so are you, the mystery of love struck me the moment you walked into the flower shop. my heart would race, not only from sickness but from your cigarette stained lips and your slicked back charm. i knew i would fall, but not this hard.
i love you. i do. i love you with all i have. and when i'm gone, i'll still love you, nothing will truly ever stop me, bucky. when god lays me down to rest eternally he will know i loved you, i'll tell him. i'll tell the angels at heaven's gates all about you, how you're prettier than all of them.
i'll tell them, i'll tell them how you're a brave soldier with a golden heart and cold coal hands, how you held me gently in the late night hours when previously the cries of war would have you handle killing machines and fallen soldier's bodies.
how to everybody around you, you're intimidating with a soft centre. i'll tell them about your smile and how you're the only person i've ever loved in my curse-ridden life. you were the only good thing god ever gave me, to love at least.
and i'm eternally grateful.
i want you to keep my promise, that you won't cry and mope, that you won't take out your sadness on all that is around you. the flowers will die, if you do so. and if you water them and let the sunlight hit them, it'll keep me happy. it'll keep you happy.
it's all i ask, is your happiness. it's all i wanted to be, was your happiness. and thank god, that for a little while, i was. and you were mine.
thank you for making me feel alive, for the first and only rime in my whole life of withering and illness. you made the blood in my veins run thick. you made the skip in my step higher, you made the touch in my fingertips softer and the heat of my cold skin warmer.
and with that, i shall leave you. i cant help it. i know i'm going to die. at least i hope to do so in your arms.
i love you. i always will, james buchanan barnes.
all my love, steven grant rogers"
salty tears splatted the page as bucky put his cigarette out on the bathroom wall tile next to him. he blew the smoke out as his nose ran, his cries soft and sweet. a smile spread across his face. he vowed to keep this note until the day he, himself died.
he kept it in his pocket, working in the shop. in the small coat zip of his uniform when he was on the field, under shelter or in the trenches. he would read it. and remember steve, his bravery, his golden heart. and bucky strived to be his best.
