The Taste of the Broken Heart

❤

It felt like time had stopped. He hadn't even realized how slow he was breathing yet. He was vaguely aware that birds were singing somewhere.

For the first time in his life, he felt how broken heart tastes.

He listened to the birds sing for a moment longer before realizing that a broken heart was his lifelong problem, and Steve was just the insulation that held him together. And now he wasn't here. He left him and won't be coming back.

He'll get over it, he has to hope. You don't die of a broken heart. But it was still as fresh as if a nurse had pulled a piece of sharp metal from someone's wet wound. It still hurt.

He could still feel the fluttering of butterfly wings in his stomach when Steve first kissed him. They clung together in the mud, an enemy side shooting past them, and they drowned in that one sweet kiss. They were two madmen in love, and that protected them from death. He could smell it, mixing aftershave and cotton.

He could still remember the light touches of Steve's hands on his hips and the tiny kisses all over his body. It was as if he could feel his breath on his neck and hear all the things that made him want more, and then the sweet words that reassured him.

He remembered his firm, hot back, which he dug his nails into and then nursed those tiny scratch wounds. His captain's voice was in his ears, telling him what he was going to do with it and what Bucky was going crazy about.

He remembered posing for Steve like some ancient statue, in sheets, with his lips to a narrow line and his eyes narrowed.

All those evenings he could only vaguely remember that were drowned in alcohol. All those mornings, full of lazy kisses and bed breakfasts.

And all of this was gone all of a sudden.

He saw his own reflection on the mirror. Clouded eyes, as if he was riding something, swollen lips and bruises on his jaw and neck. He wanted to reach out to himself, touch himself - Then he pulled his hand back. It was just a reflection. A dim memory, almost forgotten among everyone else and equally painful.

Birds still sang in the trees, and Sam approached him across the garden at Stark's house. Sam Wilson, who always looked so disdainful and doubtful, managed to spoil every romantic moment Bucky had with Steve, and occasionally saw something that would leave him with trauma for the rest of his life. A member of their team, better be independent and without the need to care for anyone else.

The closer he got, the more you could tell something was different. His expression was not skeptical, more worried. And everything was beginning to make sense slowly.

"You knew it," Bucky said instead of saying hello, "for God's sake, you knew it all along."
"Shall I be kind or honest?" Wilson looked away, "I came to ask if you want a ride."
"Where should I go?"
"To base. Home."
Bucky blanketed uneasily. He would have nowhere else to go, and the base seemed a safe place. He broke up behind Sam and pulled up to his car shortly and got in.

The road to the base from Tony's house ran almost entirely around fields and woods, but it was not long. It lasted about twenty minutes, in case the road was dry and the driver knew where speed was measured and where it could go like an a-hole.

"Have you ever been jealous?" Bucky broke silence by saying a question that had weighed on him for a long time, and he knew how much he risked walking the rest of the way.

Sam continued to stare at the road, but gripped the steering wheel tighter and frowned a little. There was silence again for a while before he replied: "I didn't have a chance. There was always Steve, the perfect kid from Brooklyn, the prototype pretty man, and he had everything I could never give you. I wouldn't left you alone here, but that's the only thing."

"Maybe someday I'll give you a chance," James said, "but now I need time. A little more time than usual. But I'll be fine, I just... I need to get even."

And so it tasted broken heart. It was hard to live, it was hard to breathe, but he would fold the little fragile thing back up so it could work.

All he learned again was not to trust anyone.

Am I relieved? Hard to say.
Should it? I published this story after Seb popped on the stories that he hadn't agreed with the end of the Endgame and that's what started me to write this story.

Then it was also an insanely gripping feeling in the chest area, which can be described in two ways: It's like the pain goes from the inside of the sternum or like someone tied a rope around my chest and tightened slowly. I don't know what it is and it's been hurting for quite a while (two weeks?). In fact, I didn't even manage to write myself out of it, and I just shared the pain. So I'm sorry.

This is my second translation of my own story, so please be patient and kind. If you spotted some mistake somewhere, let me know.

Thanks for your love.

Annie.