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“It feels just like yesterday” Steve comments as he looks lovingly upon the old man in the hospital bed. His milk chocolate skin had lightened up a little more with old age, his black hair had grayed out, and the permanent smile that seemed to be placed upon his face has worn into an old, tired smile that still seems to grace his face. His honey brown eyes had dulled with age, but they still showed hints of a much younger man living inside the old body.
“Sadly enough, a man doesn’t get this old in a day” the man responded looking at Steve with that same look of friendship and love that they both had for one another all those years ago during the war and a little ways before. Steve head tilted down to where their hands were clasped as he snickered and said, “Yeah, takes a lot of years to get that gray.”
Danny McBride was a one-of-a-kind man who took joy in other people's ignorance each time some Brooklyn punk would try to scrap with him just because he was “dirty”; Daniel “Danny” McBride wasn’t “dirty” or “unclean” - he was just a man that was born into the skin color of someone who was meant to be underestimated. Punks in Brooklyn tried to beat him down time after time, but he never let them because he wasn’t afraid of them - he wasn’t scared of anyone when they tried to hurt him.
He told Steve that, if he wanted to stand tall, he first had to make people see that he wasn’t afraid of a few bruises and broken bones...it wasn’t the physical look of a person that made them who they were - it was their heart. Danny wore his heart on his sleeve and his stubbornness in his attitude towards life; he never let anything knock him down for long, because he saw it as a growing experience rather than a stone tied to his ankles.
When Danny lost Bucky, though, it was a blow he’d never be able to recover from.
“He’d be proud of you, you know. You lived a full life just like he wished for you too” Steve says before he looks over to a picture that featured a younger Danny and another black man standing beside him with his arm slung over Danny’s shoulders. The way Danny was looking at him was a look of pure love and adoration that spoke volumes of what he had felt for Bucky; if the pure love and adoration in that photo was to tell him of something, it told him that, though a large chunk of Danny was missing, he was still able to give a piece of himself to another person who he felt was worthy of holding the last little bit of the feelings he had left to love someone else.
“Sometimes I picture seeing Bucky hiding away in the shadows at night while I’m supposed to be sleepin’. He sits there and just...watches over me silently like an Angel of Death or a Guardian Angel, and...I just find myself talking to him. It was always so easy to open up to Bucky about my hopes, ambitions, and just general thoughts, ya know? Sometimes I think he talks back, and tells me that, though the world has changed, I haven’t” Danny tells Steve as he looks to the very corner seat that he pictures Bucky has been sitting in for the last three years of his life.
Truth be told, he swears he’s seen Bucky multiple times whether it be in a bar he and his husband would start to frequent or on the street when he least expects to see the handsome Romanian man. Everytime he sees him, his hair gets a little bit longer each and every time until it finally reached his shoulders and was left that length; the love of his life seemed to haunt him everywhere he went every five or six years. Like clockwork, Bucky’s image would pop up when he least expected it before he’d vanish just to continue the cycle over and over again without Danny ever knowing just how many places he sees him at.
Each time he catches that glimpse or has the feeling of being watched, he always knows that Bucky is watching or following him, but, to not let Bucky know he’s onto him, Danny continues with his daily routines, he continues on with living his life, but he always, always, leaves little tells for Bucky to know Dany has seen him and that he still loves him.
Back in the 1940’s it was against the law for a black man to take an interest in a white woman let alone two men to have an interest in each other, but Danny and Bucky made it work. When the war hit, they were forced to separate since black men weren’t looked at as much besides cannon fodder and good enough for menial labor that the other white men didn’t feel like doing or couldn’t do since they were doing more pressing things.
It was all coincidence when Danny and Bucky were brought back together after Bucky went back to London with the Howling Commandos. Danny could automatically tell the difference in his lover as soon as he saw him - this was a battle torn and battle worn Bucky that was always on his guard no matter who he was around. He always had eyes on the entrances even though he’d try to act like the Bucky Danny knew before the war; his man had changed during the war, and Danny only wanted to see the light sparkle in those deep blue eyes of his once more.
So, Danny started sending Bucky love notes; he was never caught since he was in charge of the US London Military Mail Room so he was able to send any message that he wanted without anyone suspecting a thing. It took Bucky over two weeks to figure out who was writing to him, and two days to confront Danny in the showers about the letters - he didn’t say a word. All he did was tilt Danny’s face up and kissed him right there in the steaming room where nobody but they would know what would happen next.
They kept their relationship a secret like they did before the war started and, slowly, the light in Bucky’s eyes started returning; love was returning Bucky to himself slowly but surely. Love would start being the weapon that Bucky used in battle, but, it would be loyalty to his best friend that would have him falling from a train just three years later.
It would be Steve who would have to break the news to Danny before he himself would go on a suicide mission never to come back for over seventy long years.
It is Steve who sits here now looking upon the man who had stolen his best friends heart all those years ago when Danny threatened to whoop him good if he even thought about trying to hit him. It was Marcus Wainwright who captured what little of Danny’s heart that there was left to take for himself after Bucky fell from that train so many years ago.
“You lived a good life though, and you finding someone else must have pleased Bucky to no end. Your stories are ones even I look forward to hearing so, maybe, your heart is reaching out to him in order to let him know that you still love him - even after all of this time” Steve says trying to interpret what Danny sees at night.
“Maybe you’re right” Danny says as he relaxes a little more into his bed hoping upon hope that the image of his former lover was just a figment of his imagination, but, the evidence that he’s seen and glimpsed Bucky throughout all of these years just doesn’t make that explanation add up in his mind.
“Get some rest, I’m visiting Peggy tomorrow in order to see how she’s doing” Steve tells him as he gets up from his chosen seat beside Danny. Squeezing his hand one last time, he lets the chocolate colored limb go before walking towards the door then, with one last look back, Steve exits the room that Danny was able to call his own.
“Yeah, rest sounds nice” he says before he slides a little ways down into the bed and immediately falls asleep to dreams of the Bucky that he knew so long ago. The light hitting off those amazing blue eyes that just screamed to be looked at, the wide smile that could light up a room, and the muss of dark brown hair that couldn’t be tamed no matter what Danny did to it. In the dream, Marcus also appeared in order to mess around with the other two; all they did was joke around and rough house feeling only happiness to see one another.
Later that night, Danny awoke to a sudden dip on the left side of the bed. He didn’t need to guess to know who it was that had come to visit him when visiting hours were far over for that day, “I always wondered when you’d visit me for one last time. I always knew when you were there - watching and looking out for me even when I didn’t need looking out for. I still love you even though it hurts my heart, but every time I think I have imagined you, you always show up to prove me wrong” Danny tells the man who has put his right hand upon his cheek in a loving gesture.
Bucky doesn’t say anything - he just looks down upon the one man that HYDRA never seemed to be able to erase from his mind. This old man is the only link to a past that the Winter Soldier has all but forgotten over the long, long years that he’s lived; while he got older, the Winter Soldier never seemed to change like he did. The Winter Soldier never got to experience arthritis, aching joints, the first strands of gray hair - he never got to experience what Danny McBride has had to experience over the long years that he’s lived.
“I’ve lived a good life - a life I know you’re happy that I’ve lived. I only wish that you got to experience what I did for so many years. To experience love, heartache, loss, and then the feeling of being able to move on even though, in your heart of hearts, you know you never will” Danny told him as the relaxing feeling of death started to course through him letting him know that his time was coming to a close. Falling asleep just to never wake up was a good death in his books. He’s lived his life, and it was time to move onto something new and extraordinary.
A pair of soft lips pressed themselves onto his forehead and, with that last bit of love from the man that had stolen his heart so many years ago, Danny McBride gently passed away in the night with the man that he loved the most sitting beside him holding his hand in his right one.
A tear slips down the unmoving face of the most feared assassin in all of history. He’s said to be a cold, unfeeling man with no ability to care about anyone but getting the job he was assigned done. If anyone could see this ghost story now, they’d think they were looking at a completely different man who, as he takes in the peaceful face of his former lover, the dam holding his emotions falls as a sob rings out into the bedroom before more and more follow it.
Putting his head into his left hand, his dark brown hair becomes like curtains hiding his face from view, but the obvious sounds of agony escaping his lips and the shuddering of his shoulders could tell anyone who walked in unexpectedly that the death of Danny McBride affected this stone cold assassin to his very core.
The last of the assassins past was finally ripped away from him leaving him nothing to cling to in this place of existence. He had no one to turn to or watch any longer, because the only person he remembers just faded away.
Sniffling, trying to get his emotions back under his control, he placed another soft kiss upon the love of his life's forehead before, getting up from the bed still sniffling, he goes to the window he had climbed into, with one last look at the man that will forever hold his heart, he jumps out vanishing into the night.