Bucky always knew, he knew he would lose Steve. Steve doesn’t believe in the stars, or the leaves, but Bucky saw the neon signs the first time Steve grinned that feral, blood tinged bite.
He took what he could take though, of his time with Steve.
Steve walks into a fight with a sinner’s prayer on his lips, and a saint around his neck. He throws a punch, In the name of the Father, breaks a leg, In the name of the Son cracks a skull on the ground, In the name of the Holy Spirit.
Steve finishes every fight with an “Amen”, but usually it's accompanied by his own black out.
Bucky ain’t religious beyond the light in the night sky and the ground 'neath his feet, but Mercy, when Steve splits his face on the side of the garbage, when he rakes his nails down Timmy Schuester’s face?
Bucky thinks he gets why the Rogers go to sunrise for Holy Communion, because he feels washed-cleaned and renewed by blood.
But when he’s got Steve, a sanctified choir boy bathed in moonlit halos? Bucky thinks that's eternal damn salvation in a kiss.
That's the thing about seeing the future, though. Bucky knows he loses Steve; doesn’t know the how or the why or the when.
But he takes as much as he can. Cigarettes from Steve’s puckered lips, blood stained and sweat soaked, breaths in burn and ash and clove like it’s communion.
Steve gives, is the thing. Steve drops onto bruised knees and he opens that cherub’s mouth up and out come the hymns the angels forgot.
Steve fucks like its penance, fights like its redemption, and loves like its unholy retribution, like he’s making up for all the wrongs he hasn't done yet and all the rights he didn't mean.
Bucky, heathen that he is, he slouches against an altar of cheap pillows and old blankets and offers up his tithes in the form of purple-green bruises and sharp bites.
Bucky doesn’t believe in any kinda after.
There’s nowhere to go after seeing Steve Rogers, sweat damp, ecstasy flushed.
There’s no chorus after Steve Rogers cries in ecstasy, after he collapses, pants out, “I love you, James.”
-
Thing is, Bucky doesn’t believe in angels or demons, God or gods.
But he believes in things beyond this world, beyond his understanding.
He sees the smoke, feels it like wet silk down his throat. It engulfs him, shrouds him, chains him up and pulls him down.
He wakes beside Steve, gasping and coughing, gagging. “Don’t go,” he pleads.
He twists his fingers into Steve’s too long locks. “Don’t go,” and it’s the ten commandments.
“Don’t go,” and he’s nailing Steve’s wrist to the bed.
“Don’t go ” but the stone is already closing up, white smoke like hell fire consuming all the mourners.
Steve comes home and he’s wearing Army Greens and Bucky spits at his feet.
“Stop it,” Steve sighs.
He’s flicking the medallion between his fingers, still waiting on a chain to wear it.
He’s got his God tattooed across his heart like that’ll stop a bullet. Like the God who left him to starve in the gutter, who stole his parents away from him, who says their love is shameful, is gonna do anything about a bunch of adrenaline junkies shooting at each other in the mud.
“There’s a spot for you,” Steve says.
Bucky spits at his feet again. “This ain’t my home, ain’t my battle, Steve. I don’t give two shits who wins. Either way,” Bucky grins, and it’s a rewind; bloody teeth and feral. “Either way, Steve, they’ll still burn me on the pyre.”
-
Bucky walks to the end with his head high, hands bound behind his back, and Steve’s old hymn ringing in his boxed ears.
He’s a traitor, a sinner, a mystic dressed in holy robes.
He’s a hell-fucked national icon, and hell, he fucked a national icon. “Close your eyes, Stevie boy,” he whispers.
Steve looks up at him, one eye swollen half shut and more blood than skin showing.
“Close your eyes, Stevie, say your prayers.”
Bucky is dropped beside Steve and maybe it ain’t nothing more than a beating ringing in his ears, but it’s as close to heaven sent he thinks he’ll ever get.
“Say a prayer, confess some shit,” Bucky says. He bends his wrist until he can feel Steve’s fingers in his own. Damn medallion is still spinning through his knuckles.
“So you’re the ghost,” Steve coughs out. “You’re the day smoke running through villages, no insignia in site.”
“You said there was a spot for me,” Bucky shrugs.
“Amen,” Steve scoffs.
Steve’s stars have always been a little out of line with Bucky’s. Have always glowed a little too bright for anyone to stare at. Bucky’s been chasing after Steve’s golden glow, but it always slipped a little past his fingers.
“Hey, Steve,” Bucky coughs out. Smoke is rising, acid sharp and bitter. “Hey, I know you don’t believe in magic, but you believe in me?”
“Always,” Steve laughs. Something warm, something wet, brushes across the back of Bucky’s neck.
“Say that old prayer, Steve,” Bucky gasps out. And he’s a traitor, a devil dancer, he’s a goddamned mystic who sold the soul he doesn’t believe in, and he’s got one chance.
He bumps Steve’s shoulder gently, closes his eyes, and screams.
Screams until the rope cutting into his wrist breaks, leaving skin raw and hanging. Picks up the shield he couldn’t be for Steve and he starts swinging.
Steve loves and fucks and fights like it is a religious awakening but when Bucky loves and fucks and fights? It’s a martyr’s prayer.
Steve is screaming in the background, God’s name the only thing keeping that dumb heart going.
The shot comes out of nowhere, from everywhere at once.
Bucky blinks, and for a second there’s a white light, a tunnel, a hole-struck hand reaching for him.
Then it’s just Steve’s face, Steve’s tears, Steve’s hands making the sign of the cross.
“Can’t save me, Pal,” Bucky coughs out. “Got too much pagan in my veins.”
Steve’s gonna try, Bucky knows, and maybe that’s why the last kiss tastes like Eucharist, tastes like redemption.
Maybe that’s why Steve’s backlit by golden smoke, slips right through Bucky’s hands into the endless black.