950.
(for @flawedamythyst - ainβt no party like an amythyst partyΒ βcos an amythyst partyβs got soulmates)
Bucky had always liked the winter, partly because summer made the straps of his prosthetic rub like hell, heavy and close and uncomfortable, and partly because heβd always known that winter was when he was gonna meet his soulmate.Β
Heβd liked that certainty, had held on tight to it through dark times - first with both hands, and then with just the one. He always found himself getting a little excited on the first morning there was crisp cold carried in the air, and stubbornly clung on to his sweaters and woolens far past the point where they really ought toβve been discarded for spring.Β
Bucky had a suitcase by the front door that never zipped up all the way, and any time someone stumbled into it it vomited mismatched gloves and woolen hats and scarves all colours of the rainbow. He had long scarves and wide scarves, tightly-woven and loose-spun, and heβd even thought about buying some thin, sheer ones, just in case. But confining his pining to four or five months in every twelve was better for him, in the long run, and instead he sweated and scowled through the summer and waited impatiently for fall.Β
It finally happened one morning, that long-awaited fuckinβ moment, stumbled over and almost missed in the chaos of his morning commute.Β
βHey, bro, watch your scarf,β someone called after him, muffled, and Bucky spun around - whipping his scarf away from where it was just about to get caught in the train doors - and searched the platform through the scratched-up glass.Β
Blue eyes.Β
That was all he goddamned saw: blue eyes, faded like worn denim, in a thin strip of cold-flushed face between a thick purple scarf wrapped around his mouth and a black beanie hat with a purple H.Β
βFuck,β he yelled, pounding his clenched fist against the door as the train pulled away, and even in the packed carriage a space cleared around him. Fuck, he couldnβt breathe, and he considered pulling the emergency brake, taking the fine for misuse on the goddamn chin, but they were already halfway through a tunnel and no way was Bucky gonna be able to pull himself back up onto the platform, not with his goddamned arm.Β
By the time he stumbled off the train at the next station heβd frozen from the inside out, curled in on himself and numb; by the time he got back to where heβd started from, no surprises, the man was gone.Β
*
He hadnβt said anything back. He hadnβt said anything back and the guy didnβt know and all bets were off because Buckyβs words were forlorn and disconnected and meaningless now. Who the fuck knew when heβd meet him again? How the fuck would he know him when he did?
Now the winter was just winter, nothing in it to look forward to, and the cold was just something that sank into his bones. Bucky quit wearing scarves for as long as it took his shoulder to hate him for it, then started wearing the same one every damned day. The suitcase got kicked out of the way into a corner, and Steve and Samβs shoes piled up around it.Β
He felt like he was missing something that heβd never got to have.Β
There was still something sentimental in him, though. Something that kept him wearing the scarf a little longer than he meant to, until the sweat was prickling around his neck and making him as crabby as the summer.Β
It was a morning in March, ineffectual alarm-clock and missed coffee and a painfully jostled arm on the stairs, and when something grabbed at his scarf Bucky spun around and practically snarled.Β
βWatch the scarf, jackass,β he snapped, and wasnβt expecting the tall or the ripped or the goddamned beautiful grin.Β
βItβs you,β the guy breathed, and his smile lit up the whole of him: his purple shirt, and his golden hair, and his eyes of faded blue.
