Love was one of the most complex feelings in the world to Bucky. He'd only felt real love a couple of times in his life, and one of those times was with Steve Rogers. The love he felt for him had undergone a few evolutions over time. A best friend, a brother, a companion, puppy love, and being truly, deeply in love with him. But though the love itself had changed over the years, it was always there. Even when HYDRA tried to wipe every shred of emotion and humanity out of him over the course of so many decades of torment and violent abuse, the love that existed in him for Steve had never really gone away. There had never actually been a time since the day they met as small children when Bucky Barnes hadn't loved Steve Rogers.
But it felt like, as deeply in love as he'd been with Steve, that their love was changing again. It wasn't something they'd planned for or maybe even intended. But things had happened, their paths had been pulled in other directions and in doing so that caused the love they shared to shift again too. It didn't mean their love story had ended. It was just a new chapter. That didn't make it easy to accept, but it also wasn't something that could be stopped. Emotions, he'd come to learn, weren't something one could really define or put into actual words. Trying to do that just sort of discredited them in his opinion.
They'd both played it safe for too long with each other, and in doing so they'd been unable to fully explore how things could've been while they were in love. He could recognize that but it still hurt like a mother fucker to have to admit it. Standing there now, forehead to forehead with Steve, Bucky wished more than anything he could go back, that he'd just told Steve how he felt when they had so many opportunities to do so. Even if things still played out the way they did, even if they were still brought to this exact moment when they had to accept that their love had to change, they still would've had a shot. They still would know what it would've been like.
When their lips met, Bucky felt his heart swell with so much love that it actually broke. It was devastating knowing that when they finally got this right, it was to close that chapter in their lives. Even so, there was no denying the love behind it. Bucky kissed Steve back, and the outpouring of emotion was all consuming and entirely overwhelming. But he didn't pull back. His hand slid from the back of Steve's neck up into his hair while his metal hand clutched onto his shirt at the small of his back. If this was the only kiss they were to ever share, then he wanted to hold onto it as long as they could.
It wasn't until his lungs were burning for oxygen that he parted from it, and already the loss of that feeling was causing the broken pieces of his heart to ache terribly. "Stevie," he whispered, already touching foreheads with him again. "Do you think, maybe, in some other world, some other time, that maybe we got it right?" Having seen those drawings at that convention of the two of them in such loving embraces -- not just the smutty fanservice -- had made him wonder, it was really the only shred of hope he had -- maybe the only thing that might make healing from this come a little easier. "Maybe some other versions of us weren't so fucking stupid?"