I always got into fights. That was the first time Bucky saw me. A tiny shrimp of a kid, I must've looked like, who had been beaten up. He scared the other boys off, took me home, cleaned me up and in time we became friends. Showed him to my mum I did, she nearly had a heart attack.
***
When my mum died, he allowed me to move in with him, in a small shack. Money was tight and we did the best we could, often scavenging on the streets for furniture or an old mattress, things that people threw away. When my asthma got the better of me, which it often did, he was there right against my back, I in his arms, keeping me warm. I wished I could have this feeling forever, must've been queer, that I knew, but I still wished. But then the war came...
***
I wanted to go off to war. But he didn't want that. Wanted me to stay here he did. I was too sickly. He was always bringing around girls, having the time of his life. Must've not known how I felt, hide it I did. But as time went on, he signed up one day on my fifth attempt. Said he didn't want to be pulled away from me too soon, if he had been picked in the draft. I knew what he really meant, that'd he be considered a coward if he didn't go, didn't go to war. He said he was going for the both of us. That last night, he held me in his arms, his chest up against my back, his face snuggled in my neck and it was truly bliss. But it was all gone far too soon. For the next morning when I woke up, he was gone, the bedsheets cold, and I was all alone again.
***
When I saved him I felt the same as ever. "Look at you Steve, what did you do?" he asked me. I only smiled, "I grew bigger," I said. "I can see that," he replied to me and then his arms were around me and hugging me, him whispering in my ear, 'you're staying right by me. We'll never be apart again,' and I was crying and smiling, and hoping that that would happen.
***
Then came the train and I was fighting for my life, and there was Bucky and I reached out for him and he was-
***
He was gone. Dead. All my fault. I couldn't save him. I had lost my best friend. I had lost my first love. And my heart was in shattered, broken, pieces upon the ground.
***
When I flew into that lake or whatever, it wasn't Penny's picture that I had on me like everyone says, it was Bucky's. I saw his face one last time before I closed my eyes.
***
When I woke up, still alive I thanked everyone, and yet part of me was missing. That part from so long before during WWII and even before that, the missing piece, my Bucky Barnes.
***
He was different. Brainwashed, and different. But he was my Bucky. The man I fell in love with. I'd make him remember me. I wanted him.
***
I awoke in the hospital. They said that he had rescued me. It meant that he was still alive, somewhere. And I was going to find him.
***
I found him by our old house, that no longers stands. Instead is an abandoned building. He just stood there. "Bucky?" I ask calling out to him and he's looking at me, his hair no longer long like the Winter Soldier, but instead short like Bucky, my Bucky.
"Steve?" he asks as though he can't believe it. "Steve?"
And I'm running to him and crushing him in a great big hug, tears running down my face, him sobbing in my shoulder. I pull back and he moans don't leave-and I cut him off taking his mouth in mine. The shock on his expression quickly changes into tenderness, and love, and as our tears run together, I know, I'm never letting him go again.