Pietro/Kurt
One of the only thing that had survived their parents long fall through the rubble of their former apartment building was the pair of gold rings that one of the rescue workers had pressed trembling into Pietro's hand. Identical, but for the words on them. Their parents soulmate words, the words they had born on their bodies for their entire life, spoken back and forth in strange parroting as Wanda and Pietro giggled. Had carved on their wedding rings and let the word see them for what they were. Now what he has left to curl his fingers around and let the metal dig into his flesh.
His words were too long for him to inscribe on a ring, unless his soulmate had fingers like the Thing (and no, wasn't him, they'd met, and the words were all wrong). And Wanda's Vision didn't want rings, and neither did she, and she pressed them both into his hand and told him to use them. When he needed them.
His words were so long though. How would anyone have time to say them? He shoved the rings in a small envelope, and kept them in his jacket like Hawkeye kept that photo, and he hung onto them. If the words on his ribs weren't enough that he would meet someone, than these would be. His parents had met; he had the words of their meeting resting above his heart, and he knew he would eventually, eventually, find neat and perfectly spaced rambler.
He has those rings tucked into his jacket where ever he goes; missions, out for food, talking to the press. They come with him into battle, and after, when he holds Wanda's hand and she tries to pull her power in. They come with him when he finally caves and asks Stark to help him locate a Sovokian church he can go to. One that he understands the language like the breath in his lungs, that he doesn't question the speaker's words or what they ask of him to do.
The closest match is a service in Russian, a tongue he knows but would not have chosen, but it one he knows. And the service should be the same.
The prayers they say are the same that his mother used to say over the candles before they ate the blessed bread.
He is coming out of confession that first day when he first sees him.
Dresses head to toe in a pitch black robe, the figure stands out from the brightly garbed men and women around them, a black wraith that draws the eye as much as it leads to sliding over the shadow. A figure that Pietro back home would have called diseased, hiding themselves from the world like that. Only this figure walks through the church like he belongs there, not skirting around anyone, though his whole body is covered. Pietro watches him approach, this figure all clothed in black, coming up to the confessional steps as he walks down them.
"Good morning," Pietro says to them, as he holds open the door to the priest's waiting room.
He does not here the man reply.
Pietro keeps coming back to the church, even going to far as to ask Wanda to come with him, though he knows she has avoided these places since the orphanage turned them out. And she comes once, and he is grateful, but he does not ask again. Steve comes too, for one Sunday, and it's nice to have him sitting there, not alone in the church, and after the service, someone recognizes him, and then the gazes have switched from angry to welcoming, and Pietro almost misses the cloaked figure ducking into the confessional hall in behind all the hubbub being made about Captain America.
Almost. He still follows that dark cloak with his eyes as it goes through the door, not a hint of the man's face below the long shadow of the hood.
It's the next Sunday, when Steve declines to come again and Pietro slips back into the quiet of the church, that it happens. He's coming into the bench row, the slow music the background to his thoughts about the Avengers' latest battle. His mind is elsewhere, his eyes on the space in front of him, but his mind has no room to look at it, to take it in and process it into action.
He isn't thinking, and he walks straight into the person ahead of him.
Down they go, tumbling together, and there's a rip of cloth, and flustered swearing, and then Pietro finds himself straddling over the man, looking into a face out of one of Stark's science fiction movies, one that looks back at him with shock and horror beyond what Pietro feels. Pietro finds himself looking into the eyes of a man with blue skin, fur over his face, and yellow eyes are that are wide and staring.
"I'm sorry," Pietro says, and starts to get up before he notices that there's two rings sitting awkwardly on the man's chest, and his hand goes to the pocket of his jacket, and the little flap that he keeps his parents' rings is hanging open. The man follows his eyes down, and is sputtering too, and they both look down at the rings. Pietro reaches, but instead of getting the rings he finds himself brushing against fur and large ringers. The man, gasps, and jerks his hand away.
"Sorry," he says, in a voice that speaks of softness and an accent that Pietro knows from home. "These must be your rings, yes?"
Pietro freezes, and lets himself fall backwards as the man slides up. The rings are pressed into his hands, he's left on the floor looking up as the man climbs to his feet, and he's clutching to the rings as his soulmate, his soulmate, draws up his good and moves away.
"Wait!" He calls out, stretching his hand to the man, still on the ground while the man is at the end of the pew aisle. "Wait, please, your words." His voice is thick, accent curling around his words, and he feels his world breaking beneath him, but the man does stop, does turn around. Turns around and stares at him with wide eyes, the shadows falling long and harsh on his furred face. "I said your words, didn't I?"
There's no other way. The words on the curve of his arm are too specific, too original, no one else would say them. He knows, he knows.
And the man with the blue fur looks down at him and sighs. "Yes. But you should find someone else." The man looks at Pietro not with that blooming love that Pietro can feel in himself, but something akin to pity. His soulmate steps away when he rises to his feet, shrinks away from his outstretched arm. "I am... I am a monster. I do not get a soulmate."
Pietro sputters, and tears at the buttons of his shirt, until he has it off his sleeve, and the neat little line of writing that that has been with him for nearly his entire life. "This is your writing, yes? You are not a monster. I have your words. I have been through enough to make me a monster."
And this time, when he steps forward, the man lets him catch his hands, and Pietro smiles as he feels three furred fingers shover under his touch. "My name is Pietro, and I have been waiting for you my entire life. Please. Give me a chance at least.
A hesitant smile, and the man squeezes his hand back. "I am Kurt. I guess... I guess we can try."