Whenever Steve thought of Bucky, his first thought was always the same. Their wings, wrapped around each other, cradled together by the amorphous mix of nothing and everything that the world once was.
The world was different now. There was sun and stars and flying birds and so many things that Steve loved and that Bucky loved because of Steve.
Steve woke to a strange feeling.
Curious, he stretched his awareness out to see what it was. The forest where he had rested remained unchanged. Primordial bird calls still rang through the newly formed trees and half-conceived rock.
He gathered himself, solidifying his corporeal body from where it had spread during his mind’s reverie.
Stretching his pearly wings up to the sky, he felt out again for the feeling. But it was gone.
With a sigh, Steve lifted himself out of the primal place. There was much work, and Creation was not yet done.
~
“You’ve felt it, haven’t you?” Bucky was sitting close enough to Steve that their legs could twine around each other.
“I don’t even know what it is.” But Steve knew what Bucky spoke of. He had no doubt that every angel had felt the dissonance seeping into the newly formed Creation.
“I don’t know what it could be. None of us are powerful enough to tamper with Creation.” He sighed.
“Do you think it’s a test?”
“Of what?” Bucky sighed again, harsher. “Why would He test us with something we don’t understand and can’t stop?”
Steve reached over, rubbing the tension from Bucky’s shoulders, guiding his fingers over the strong muscles he knew so well. Suddenly, he had an idea.
“I know what you need.” He took both of Bucky’s hands.
Bucky smiled at the familiar light in his eyes. Together, they leaned forward, pitching off the edge of the cumulonimbus they had been perched upon. When the wind started to whistle through their ears, Steve released his hands to allow their wings to snap out and catch the wind.
Bucky’s hair caught the wind as his wings did, blowing around his face and making him laugh when Steve flew over him to gently brush its ends.
With a powerful stroke, Bucky soared up, Steve just behind him, spiraling in an airborne dance like two leaves caught in a breeze.
When they crested their arc and started to fall, Steve could see the look of pure joy on Bucky’s face, the sun catching his hair, completely at peace with his command of the skies.
He was so beautiful. And as he began to gracefully plummet to earth, Steve followed.
~
There was a Rebellion.
Dozens of Angels, Demons, they called themselves, had revealed themselves openly, showing the halos they had broken into horns and the wings they carved from their own divine flesh.
It was chaos. Angels fled and screamed while the terrorizers chanted.
We are no longer beholden.
We free ourselves from His reign.
We follow no laws.
Steve covered his ears, unable to stop the terrible dissonant chanting. This is what it had been the whole time. The dissonance unfurling the precision of creation, was the rejection of the divine of their own nature. A divorce from heaven itself.
Bodies and spirits tousled around Steve, clamoring to get away. He couldn’t find Bucky. An Earth-shaking voice let out an angry cry and an unimaginable streak of lightning hit the chanters.
Micheal came.
And the Demons fled too.
Then they fell. Out of space, time, and knowledge.
~
The next day, Bucky wasn’t there, or anywhere else to be found.
When he finally did appear, suddenly sitting next to Steve in a mountain valley filled with flowers that glimmered like stars, he didn’t return Steve’s warm embrace.
“I need to go somewhere.” Sorrow had etched its way into Bucky’s features.
“Where?” Steve was already standing.
“You can’t come with me.”
Steve froze. “Why not?”
“You don’t want to.”
“I want to be wherever you are.” His voice quavered only a bit.
“Not there. I can’t ask you to… Not that.” Now Bucky’s voice began to shake as Steve realized what he meant.
Bucky’s beautiful wings were nothing more than charred stumps, and a lightning-pattern scar traced up his left arm.
“You’re following them?” A mask of calmness settled over him like the moment in between lightning and thunder.
“I have to. Steve, please. I was never meant to be here, do this. You were. You can stay, do good, not like what I was doing.”
“What’s good if not you?”
“Stevie, please-” But Steve was gone, vanishing himself like dew in the morning sun.
“I love you,” Bucky whispered, words swallowed by the night.
~
Bucky felt at home in hell.
The landscape reminded him of the volcanoes and hidden magma chambers he had sometimes explored in between his angelic duties.
Most importantly, here he had people he agreed with, who he could talk to without fear of judgement.
The only thing that was missing was Steve.
He could handle the fires of hell. He could handle the fractious discord that now shook every fibre of his being. He could handle the scorn of those he had once called his peers and Maker.
But he couldn’t handle the disappointment and hurt that he had put on Steve’s face.
So he isolated himself, content to wallow in his own misery, until one of the smaller demons pulled him out of his seclusion to where everyone else was gathered.
Steve was there.
The fires all around looked odd, reflected in his deep blue eyes, and the horns didn’t fit amidst his neat blond hair.
Those pearly wings with which he had danced through the skies so lightly were gone, only a few charred feathers clinging to his white robe.
Bucky squeezed his eyes shut, unable to take the guilt the sight filled him with.
Steve’s hands gracefully, lovingly, cupped his cheeks.
“You fell?” Bucky’s voice was barely more than a whisper.
“For you.”
“But you could’ve flown. Why would you want to be stuck down here with me?”
Steve gently took his hand. “What good is flying when I can’t stop you from falling? What’s heaven to your arms? What’s God and Salvation compared to you?”
Bucky wept, tears sizzling on his skin in the intense heat. Steve pressed his cold lips to Bucky’s cheek, kissing away the sadness and regret and remembering when there were no sides to choose and nothing to make them sad, and made him forget there had ever been anyone in the world besides the two of them.
Whenever Bucky thought of Steve, his first thought was always the same. Their wings, wrapped around each other, cradled together by the amorphous mix of nothing and everything that the world once was.
The world was different now. There was darkness and moon and fire and so many things that Bucky loved and Steve loved because of Bucky.