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You are six years old the first time you meet him. He pulled you out from under three other older boys that you picked a fight with after they wouldn’t leave the poor kitten alone. They’ve already broken your nose, and maybe your arm too, you aren’t sure. You just know that he goes to give you a talking to and you take a swing without a second thought. You don’t need his help. You don’t need anyone’s help, ‘sides maybe your Mam’s. Mam always did say you were too proud. And the next thing you know you can’t breathe, lungs refusing to contract to bring in air that you desperately need, and he pulls your hand to his chest and makes you breath in time with him and you don’t know it, but that is the moment you make the best friend you’ll ever have. You are ten years old the first time he holds your hand while the priest tells you you’re gonna die and to please forgive all of your sins. You don’t really remember it, lost in a haze of fever and delirium. He tells you later, while he blushes and stutters about it, trying to tell you he didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or anything. You laugh at him, slug him in the arm, and ask him to teach you to play poker like your Mam’s do together. You don’t even know how much more tactile the pair of you get after that, always attached at the hip, slinging arms over each other's shoulders, smacking arms, ruffling hair. You don’t even notice the way people whisper behind their hands about you. You are thirteen years old the first time you see him kiss a girl. It’s behind the school, in the alley you got beat up in last week. You never tell him that you saw him, because then you would have to admit that seeing it made you want to vomit, and god help you, you don’t know why. You didn’t even know the girl. You should not hate her like this. You don’t understand why you do either. You do ten Hail Mary’s for hating someone you don’t know, and you never tell him that’s why you avoided him for a couple of days. A week later he catches you kissing Maria in an unused classroom when you’re supposed to meet him on the way home. He whistles at you, and you don’t have the heart to tell him that while you think girls are pretty enough, you hate the way she feels against you. You are fifteen years old the first time you get drunk together, off a bottle of whiskey he nicked from his Pa’s liquor cabinet. It makes you feel hazy and off center, and you’re really not sure you like it, but he seems to be having a blast as you lay on the floor together, so you don’t say anything about it to him. He confesses that as much as he kisses girls, he’s not sure he actually fancies any of them, but it gets his Ma off his back. He confesses that he thinks he might be broken, for not wanting to go steady with any of the girls he’s kissed. You can’t help but kiss him to shut him up, informing him in no uncertain terms that he could three heads and twenty-seven toes, and he still wouldn’t be broken. It takes you three days to realize what you did, and when you do, you have to rush to the sink to vomit and desperately hope you haven’t ruined the one good thing you’ve been allowed, ‘sides your Mam, since you were born. You are seventeen years old the first time either of you acknowledge what happened when you were fifteen. He’s the one that brings it up, shy and sweet and asking if maybe, you’d want to kiss him again. He claims it’s for practice, so that you know what to do when you finally meet a woman who’ll give you the time of day, but you both know no woman is ever going to look at you twice. The look in his eyes says he wants to anyway, so you pull him close, dig your nails into his back and kiss him for all your worth. You know you won’t get to keep him, so you want to make the most of it while it lasts. You are eighteen years old, and your heart is breaking. The only person in the whole world who loved you your whole life was dead. She was dead and buried in the cold dark ground and you had exactly one reason you weren’t following her. And then he is there, your reason is there, pulling you out of your grief and wallowing and giving you something to focus on. Something to pull you back. You know in that moment, in that vow, that you’d follow him to the ends of the Earth. You open your mouth to tell him, but instead, what comes out is a simple, “Jerk” You are nineteen years old and he drags you out once a week with women who would be happier to watch you get kicked around by the men that scare them then talk to you. They adore him with his easy smiles and bright eyes. You don’t tell any of them that you adore him too. That you think there might be something wrong with you, with the way you moon over him. You don’t think you’re queer, not really, cause you think they’re pretty too. But you do know that when you listen to him in the next room giving them a good time, it takes every ounce of self-control not to shove a hand down your trousers. You are twenty years old the first time you fall into bed with him. The first time it’s almost an accident, a late-night dream that turns into fooling around. The second time you dig your nails into him so hard he bleeds, and he orgasms so hard he passes out for a few seconds. It’s the first time you consider that you may be darker than you originally thought. But that’s okay cause he likes it too, from the way he gets on his knees and begs you to hit him the third time. You are twenty-one years old and he’s at war and you’re stuck in a machine, finally getting to prove that you’re worth something. And you meet her and she sees you, even when you’re little and bony and a bag of bones she sees you and for the first time you feel something similar to what you had felt for him and you let yourself dream that maybe, just maybe, you can have them both in your life, with you. Maybe you all three have a future. You are twenty-five when he falls off that train, so hard and so fast and so gone and you should have caught him. You should have fucking caught him but you didn’t and now your best friend and your other half are dead. He’s dead. And sure, she’s great, but she’s not him and she understands that. She understands that she will never be able to take his place and she doesn’t try. It’s wonderful that she doesn't try. And a few short weeks later you put down the plane and you’re ready. You’re so ready to see him again. You are ninety-two (and twenty-six) years old when you wake up, informed that you’ve been asleep for sixty seven years and all you can think is that they should have let you stay in the ice, because at least you wouldn’t have had to wake up in a world without her and a world without him and then it’s eleven days later and they’re having you fight fucking aliens and all you can think is how much he would have adored the future (You have a fucking computer in your pocket) and how well She would have fit in (She would have adored the Black Widow and how strong and competent she is) and you miss them more than ever. You are ninety-four (and twenty-eight) years old and you visit her at least once a week, despite it making you want to throw yourself into a volcano because you make her sad and she makes you sad but she’s all you have left. Except… except maybe you’re beginning to have a family with Natasha and her husband Clint and his sister Laura. You don’t love any of them liked you loved him and her, but you do think you could love them. You think they could be your best friends and your siblings and your siblings-in-arms and for the first time you see a possible future You are ninety-five (and twenty-nine) years old when you find Him again. He’s hurt and scared and doesn’t remember and you hate it. You hate it because you could have jumped after him and protected him and now, he’s fucking like this, hurt and broken and barely more of a husk of himself. But then he fishes you out of the river and he vaguely remembers you, but he trusts you. And it’s enough. You’re going to help him. You are one hundred (and thirty-four) years old and you’ve married him and you get to spend your life with him. He’s not who he once was but neither are you and even though you take shifts sleeping and some nights you can’t have sex because neither one of you can stand to be out of any control at all, so all you do is cuddle, but it’s okay. It’s okay because you love him and he loves you and for the first time in your life, you’re happy without any hesitation.