Steve is nine years old, and on his ribs in scrawly blank ink reads, “I had him on the ropes.”
Sarah explains softly to him that it’s his soulmate mark, a special tattoo linking him to the love of his life for all of eternity. His tiny little fingers trace the inside of her forearm, i’m sorry sarah blazed forever on her skin and in his young mind, and she tucks him in a few hours later as he coughs and prays to god that his lungs hold out for one more night.
He can’t sleep, however, absently prodding at the words on his ribs, imagining what his soulmate is like. Even when his coughs get so rough he nearly passes out from the pain, Steve’s final thought is of his soulmate.
Steve is eleven years old, and on his collar there is a distinct blood stain. His mother sucks in a sharp breath and yells at him until she’s out of breath, but Steve doesn’t say a single word the entire time. She notices, later, as she’s beating out the stain, that Steve is only bruised but not bleeding.
“Stevie,” she asks gently, “who’s blood is this?”
Steve’s eyes are wide and disbelieving, but his whole voice tremors with excitement as he whispers in one, hushed breath, “I met my soulmate, Ma.”
She listens quietly as Steve explains how a young boy had stepped in when a bully approached him for his lunch money, and how Steve had been the one to deliver the final blow that send the bully scrambling. i had him on the ropes, the young boy whined, but his smile was warm and Steve’s entire body was thrumming with electricity.
Sarah’s heart dropped as she looked down at her own mark, most often covered by the fabric of her sleeve, a cruel reminder of the last thing Joseph had ever said to her before —
“Steve, honey,” she has to explain later, breaking the heart a boy who is barely eleven. “The soulmate mark isn’t of their first words to you.”
Steve is silent for many days after that.
Regardless, she comes home from her shift one night to find a shaggy looking boy sitting next to her son, and he introduces the boy as Bucky, and Sarah knows that she’ll be seeing Bucky until the end of her days.
*
Steve is fifteen years old, and the small black casket in front of him is terribly heart-breaking.
Bucky is next to him, folded in on himself and dutifully trying not to cry. Today he buries his youngest sister, seven years old, who’s shoulder blade read becca be careful! Steve reaches out automatically, hand gripping Bucky’s elbow, until Bucky relaxes enough for Steve to grab his hand. He is still straggly and small, but his hand is a heavy warmth wrapped around Bucky’s fingers.
Steve wonders, not for the first time, what Bucky’s mark is. He wonders if Becca even understood the implications of the words on her shoulder.
He wonders if the young girl with the tear-streaked face understands that they are burying her soulmate before the two even had a chance to fall in love.
He wonders if, morbidly, Bucky’s mother had seen those words and understood that those were the words that took her baby girl away.
He thinks, not for the first time, that the soulmate mark is horribly, repulsively unfair.
*
Steve is eighteen years old, and for the first time he is seeing Bucky’s mark.
It’s black, almost illegible, reading grab my hand, and it’s surrounded by harsh, red and white scars. “Buck…” Steve whispers, sadly. Bucky is trembling, upset or angry or sad, and he hastily pulls the fabric of his boxers back down over his thigh.
“I tried to burn it off,” he admits. “I hate it. I hate the marks. They aren’t fair, Steve, it’s not fair to know that the last thing my soulmate is ever going to say to me is grab my fucking hand. Jesus, I’m not even going to understand that I just lost my soulmate until it’s already too late! It’s not fair, Steve, I didn’t ask for this mark, I didn’t want it—”
Steve slowly shrugs off his shirt, cutting Bucky off when he gestures to his own marking. “These were the first words you ever said to me,” Steve mumbles, looking down. Bucky is still staring at Steve’s ribs in shock. “Sometimes part of me thinks that maybe I’m the different one who gets the first words instead of the last. Sometimes part of me hopes—”
He can’t bear to hear anymore, he can’t, so Bucky leans over and attacks Steve’s lips with his own, greedy and desperate and relieved. “I thought I was the only one who wanted this,” the gasps, and Steve silences him with his lips.
Later, wrapped around each other, Steve whispers, “I promise to never say those words to you. Not if they’re gonna hurt you.”
Bucky wordlessly presses a kiss to Steve’s neck.
Steve is twenty-one years old, and he sats nervously in front of a crowd of people who all believe the same thing he does.
It is hard to believe that over five thousand people in his state alone could rally behind the cause that he and Bucky had originally been behind.
He stands off to the side of the stage, beaming proudly at the love of his life, and Steve’s heart flutters as he takes in the sight of his soulmate.
“I am in awe standing in front of you today,” Steve says, still looking at Bucky, “wondering why I never imagined that one confession in the middle of the night would lead to such a movement as it has become today. What I once thought was blasphemous, the disapproval of the soulmate marking, I have now come to suspect is a viewpoint shared across the world. It is not fair for us to know the last words our soulmates will say to us; so here we stand, united, ready to defy.”
There has been reports of people who, like Steve believed himself to be, were imprinted with the first and not the last of their soulmates words. Since Steve himself had come out and embraced his role as the leader of this movement, many others had stepped forward and admitted their relationships were of the same.
“The soulmate marking does not define us,” Steve continues. “There are cases of the markings being the last words exchanged between platonic relationships. There are cases where the marking changes; such as it did to a particularly brave young man who came out as transgender and changed his name—his marking changed to accommodate him accordingly. There are cases of the markings fading from the skin altogether.
“There are cases like mine, where the words permanently etched on my body are not the last words I will ever hear the love of my life say, but instead the first,” Steve says, drawing out a collective sigh of contentment from the crowd. “There is not a day that I am not grateful for choosing to interpret my marking the way I did—it has led me to the person who means more than the world to me. My Bucky. And that is what makes this movement important…”
Steve is twenty-two years old, and he is celebrating his birthday with copious shots of alcohol and sloppy kisses from his soulmate. The only person who might be more drunk than him is Bucky, who is pressed too tightly against his side, more grabby than usual and nosing against the exposed skin of Steve’s neck.
“Buuuuuck,” Steve giggles, pushing Bucky back. “That tickles.”
Bucky nuzzles again and presses five open mouthed kisses to Steve’s collarbone. He giggles and winds his arm tighter around Steve’s waist. “M’so lucky, Stevie.”
“Still at the party, Buck,” Steve gasps when Bucky’s tongue darts out and traces his neck. “Still in public—jesus, Bucky, g—”
Bucky pulls away at the sharp shrill, frowning and pouting in his adorable way, but settling for cuddling into Steve’s side. Tony, drunk off his ass and stumbling, falls down a few feet in front of Steve and Bucky and laughs for a solid thirty seconds straight. “Happy birthday, you asshole!” Tony shouts from the ground, and Bucky’s breath is hot on Steve’s neck when he giggles. “No, seriously, Steve, and I mean this from the bottom of my black, crusted heart. You are a dumbass, but you’re doing wonderful things that make my relationship more socially acceptable. So happy birthday, asshole. I’m forever in your debt.”
Steve raises his half empty cup of beer in salute, and a tipsy Pepper and sober Rhodey come and carry Tony’s ass out the door. Steve’s happy, here, surrounded by the friend’s he’s made on this journey, with the love of his life trying to drunkenly seduce him in public. Bucky’s hands are electric, roaming, and they falter over Steve’s ribs, over the permanent etching linking them together.
Bucky freezes all together. “Steve,” he whispers. “Steve, listen. I got an idea. For your birthday present. I mean, I already got you one, but this one—this—this one will be good. So good. Better. Do you trust me?”
“You’re drunk, Buck,” Steve whispers.
“Drunk on you,” Bucky giggles, and Steve rolls his eyes. Bucky presses his hand firmly against Steve’s ribs. “No, but really, Steve. I have an idea.”
Steve is twenty-three years old, and he’s standing in front of a jeweler’s wringing his hands nervously.
He never thought his life would come to this. But he’s happy, happier than he ever expected to be. They’ve already sworn to stay together forever, already marked their skin with their vows, already committed to each other in every other way—he can’t believe he’d only now thought of making it legal.
His phone starts to ring.
“Steven Grant Rogers!” Bucky shouts. “You get your ass inside right now.”
“I can see you through the window, moron, now get inside so we can pick out our rings and move on and start planning.”
Warmth bubbles up in Steve’s heart. “You moron,” he laughs. “You went out looking for an engagement ring on the same day as me?”
“Are we soulmates, or what?” Bucky laughs. “Please get your cute ass inside. Please? Come inside so we can pick out our rings.”
Steve laughs and hangs up. Inside, Bucky is telling the jeweler the story of Steve’s twenty-second birthday. He’s waving his arms widely, and the jeweler is grinning in response. When Bucky notices Steve, he yells happily and grabs his hand.
Bucky shows the jeweler a picture of the soulmate marks they created themselves, a nondescript tattoo on Bucky’s ribs, the same as Steve’s, reading I know you did.
Steve is eleven years old, and the bully who had been beating up to a pulp is running away. In front of him, a young boy not much bigger than he, chest heaving as he wipes blood from his mouth.
“I had him on the ropes,” the boy insists, and Steve’s fragile heart warms.
Steve is twenty-four years old, and his husband is drafted into the war.
It’s stupid, the war. Civil discord over the damn soulmate debate. One side said saying that the mark didn’t determine anything, that it wasn’t a rule that had to be followed, others said the marks exist for a reason.
And Bucky was going to fight.
“I don’t want you to,” Steve mumbled into Bucky’s chest, tightening his grip around his husband. “We just got married, Buck, I don’t want you to leave.”
Bucky sighs, chest trembling slightly as he tried to be strong. “Hey, it’s no big deal. This whole thing is gonna blow over in a few months, trust me. They just want me in the fight because you’re the one leading the rebellion. They need one half of the power couple on the battlefield.”
“I just wish I could go with you,” Steve whines.
Bucky presses a kiss to Steve’s hair. “Baby, you’re my soulmate. I take you with me everywhere I go.”
Steve is twenty-six years old, and it has been ten months since he has last seen his husband.
Bucky is solid and warm and he feels more like home than their large Brooklyn apartment has felt in a long time. He’s larger, stronger, but he’s everything Steve has been craving for months. “Bucky,” Steve gasps. “Bucky.”
“Hey,” Bucky laughs, sagging in relief. “Hi, Steve. Hey.”
Steve just clings tighter.
Bucky shows him around the facilities, shows him every part of this new and exciting chapter of his life, and holds his hand the entire time. He introduces him to all of his friends (“This is Steve, my soulmate. My husband.”), and they all look at Steve warmly and laugh and say that Bucky never stops talking about him.
Bucky lays him down roughly in his bed, later, and kisses him like he’s starved, and they make love desperately until they’re both crying with relief.
Steve traces the tattoo on Bucky’s ribs, starting to lighten with time, and smiles down at the words.
“I love you,” Bucky says sleepily, arms draped around Steve.
Steve pokes the tattoo and presses his lips softly to the skin. “I know you do,” he says with a small laugh. He falls asleep happy.
The next day is his speech, the reason he and Bucky were able to see each other in the first place. Steve stands on a podium in front of thousands of soldiers who are tired and ready for an end, and he gives the same speech he’s been giving for months.
“Big talk from a man who won’t even enlist!” some bitter fool in the crowd shouts at Steve.
“I just want the war to be over so my husband can come home,” Steve says honestly, seriously, and Bucky holds him a little bit tighter that night.
When he groggily comes to the next day, Bucky is packing a bag and crying. He mumbles an explanation through his tears, something about a spy in a town twenty miles over, how he is the sniper chosen for the mission. The mission will take three weeks.
Steve is supposed to leave in five days.
“I’m coming,” Steve says, resolutely, and Bucky helps him stow away on the truck.
He gets caught, of course, but the lieutenant lets him stay when Steve saves his life from an angry civilian in town with a gun. He and Bucky make one hell of a team, and the lieutenant asks Steve if he’d like to permanently join the task force.
The day they reach the target is the day Steve’s happiness is shot to hell.
They’re ambushed, Bucky is attacked. The soldier manages to slash him with a knife before Steve puts a bullet through the guy’s heart. Bucky is panting on the ground, eyes wide, but he gives Steve the proudest smile. “I had him on the ropes,” Bucky teases, and Steve laughs.
“I know you did,” Steve agrees, offering Bucky his hand.
Bucky barely has time to reach up before Steve is knocked to the side. Bucky immediately picks up his gun but the assailant has the element of surprise, and knocks it out of Bucky’s hand before grabbing Bucky and throwing him out of the factory window. Steve yells in rage and picks up the discarded gun, loading the guy with five bullets before rushing to the window.
Bucky is holding on to a frail piece of railing, and the battle rages on below him as soldiers fight and shoot and fall.
“Bucky,” Steve cries desperately, He’s reaching out the window, as far as he can, extending his hand to his best friend and soulmate. “Hold on! Baby, hold on. Take my hand.”
Bucky tries to reach for him, but the entire railing shakes at his movements so he stills. Steve yells angrily. “Goddamn it, Buck, I just got you back, take my hand.”
Bucky’s eyes are wide, scared, the way they used to look when he was just an eleven year old kid. His mouth trembles slightly, preparing to say Steve’s name, but the bubble of fear in Steve’s chest becomes so constricting, he shouts, he yells, he cries—
Bucky’s face falls and then—
Steve is twenty-seven years old, and he buries his soulmate on his birthday.
OKAY SO THE ITALICS WONT TRANSFER OVER IF THINGS GET CONFUSING IM SORRY ALSO IM SORRY IN GENERAL I DIDNT MEAN TO WRITE YOU ANGST
2087
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
areudirty
