[Zevran reaches for the hand at his side, the metal hand, and holds it gently. His thumb smooths over the plates and hinges as he thinks. He doesn't have some deeper, romantic meaning like Bucky did. He had been calling him leon before he even knew his name. Back when he was just the soldier and his mentor. And then the soldier told him his name, but the nickname stuck, even into adulthood. He felt somewhat silly for sticking with this name for so long even. His smile becomes lopsided, bashful even as his eye glance at the tile behind Bucky's head.]

I mean...it's not that difficult. Lions are strong, they fight.

[It was easy to see the soldier as a lion. It wasn't until they started to connect, and Bucky began to risk more and more for Zevran that he realized that this lion could do more.]

There was a book I was allowed to read when I was a young. It had a lion in it. He was a warrior, he protected people he cared for, even died them.

[Just like how Bucky tried to take him away from all this, protected him, and made him strong enough to survive. That's when he became his lion.]

You've always been a lion to me, it just took me time to figure out that you were mine.