"Once upon a time," Steve began, tracing his finger under the familiar words that his Ma had read time and time again.
Marry me Bucky thought impulsively. He almost said it, too, before his brain caught up with his heart and he kept silent.
They were eight years old on the floor of Steve's apartment, the pillows from the old couch propped up like a castle. Not as flashy as the one in the fairy tale, but almost.
Marry me, marry me, marry me- that wasn't right. Bucky shook his head slightly and Steve looked up. "No, keep going. I had an itch." Bucky lied easy as pie.
When Steve's Ma came home, the look she gave Bucky made him sweat under the collar of his too-small shirt. Sometimes Bucky got the feeling that she didn't like him hanging around her son very much, which he didn't blame her for. He was mean and nasty and Black Irish and a whole lotta boy. That's the way Bucky's Ma had tried to explain it to him.
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Sarah Rogers worried over the cut on Steve's eyebrow and the sickly green bruise blooming just below it.
"'S'okay, Ma, Bucky got 'em back." Steve assured her thickly, choking slightly on the slowing trickle of blood from his nose. That made her hands still.
"Oh. Really?" She asked carefully, like treading on glass. That Bucky Barnes was a handful.
"Yeah, he's outside 'cause he said he didn't want to get blood on the floor an' all." Steve said this as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
Sarah threw open their apartment door, perhaps a little more forcefully than necessary, to find Bucky in the flesh sitting outside, nursing his wounds. She pulled him in despite his protests.
Steve hid a smile when Bucky warily accepted a hug from Steve's Ma. People didn't normally go to hug him. He figured it was because he was sorta mean and then some. But Steve's Ma hugged him like she meant it.
Bucky was nine years old and he'd never felt so calm in his life. He caught Steve's eye, looking god awful with his new shiner swelling up near half of his face. Marry me Bucky thought.
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"What happened?" Sarah Rogers drilled Steve, hands on her hips and mad in the special way that really screamed worry.
Bucky was sort of like that, Steve thought, since he always acted one way when he meant the other. Bucky would put his hands in his hair and stare at the ceiling when really Steve knew he wanted to give Steve a piece of his mind for one thing or another.
"Steven Grant Rogers. What. Happened." Steve's Ma gritted out. She wasn't going to repeat herself again.
"Uh." Steve stared at the floor, his shoe, the little hole in his Ma's hospital uniform- anywhere that didn't involve actually looking at her.
Sarah Rogers turned on the other boy; the one who stood with his back turned to her and Steve, hands in his pockets, toeing absently at the rough spot in the floor boards and studying the cabinets in the kitchen. "Bucky." His shoulders tensed up to his ears and he froze his extraneous movement. Guilty as charged.
Steve groaned internally. Bucky could lie and flirt his way out of anything right up until he had to face Steve's Ma. When it came to Sarah Rogers, Bucky was her number one informant- the little rat.
It was a nasty thing to feel about your best buddy, and Steve felt a little bad about it, but it was true.
Steve's Ma got her halting confession from Bucky, complete with hair twirling and knuckle cracking and all the rest of Bucky's tells.
They were twelve years old and Steve noticed, for the first time, that he didn't like the silence that Bucky left after his Ma had delivered her punishment: No Bucky for two days.
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"You gonna marry her?" Steve asked as he and Bucky stood on the street corner watching Bucky's date step into the cab and head home.
Bucky waited a beat. He always got real nervous around girls and talked a whole awful lot. Steve liked his silence, jealously proud that Bucky was quiet around him.
"Hell no." Bucky replied finally, his statement followed by a recklessly flashing grin. "Hell no."
Steve fit nice and easy under Bucky's arm. Bucky had his coat draped over one arm and his tie loosened from the dance hall. Steve could feel the muscles over the bones of Bucky's rib cage, his good ear up close enough so that he could hear what a good, strong heart sounded like.
"I'm marrying you," Bucky said. They walked side by side all the way to Steve's building.
"Goodnight darling." Bucky joked. But it felt like a promise, sounded like something more. Steve reached up and laced his fingers around the back of Bucky's neck, pulling him down to Steve's level until Bucky grinned and Steve grinned back and they stopped joking around and broke apart to go their separate ways.
"Sure know how to charm a guy, Barnes." Steve called after him. Bucky didn't turn back, but he raised an open hand in acknowledgement.
Steve's Ma was reading by the candle when Steve came back to their apartment. He kissed her on the cheek. She grabbed his arm before he could go to bed. "Darling," She said. And it was different than it had been on Bucky's lips, but the underlying promise -to love, always- was still the same. "He'll break your heart."
"Ah, Ma, the President ain't that bad." Steve replied lightly.
"Baby, lord knows you're the last person he'd hurt, but he'll do it anyway. Bucky doesn't know how to live any other way. He's Black Irish, he's going to break your heart." Sarah Rogers insisted, kind but firm.
"Ma, I-" it's only a joke, we're pals, he doesn't mean it when he says he's gonna marry me, I'm not a fairy, Bucky's as straight as they come, right? You know it's only a joke, right? "-I already know."
Steve went to bed. He was sixteen years old.
One year and two months later, Sarah Rogers died and Bucky broke Steve's heart and cut himself on the pieces in the process.