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The Sunday school room in the community hall at the back of the church yard is always stuffy, slightly dusty as though the cleaners didn't really bother with it (hell on Steve's asthmatic lungs), and has squeaky floors that protest when Bucky scuffs his plimsoles over them as he swings his legs on his chair. He's seven, and Steve is six; both of them small, with knobbly knees and elbows and too-long bangs that hang awkwardly in their eyes, and Bucky is constantly blowing his out of the way or brushing it aside with grubby fingers. His Ma despairs. (James, I got you ready for church not ten minutes ago, how on God's green earth are you covered in - well, God's blessed brown earth - already? Why can't you be a good boy, even on a Sunday? Lord, but you children were sent down to test me - James Buchanan Barnes, get out of that sandpit before I box your ears, we are going to church in five minutes and you are going to look neat and presentable for once in your blessed life-)
Beside him, Steve is neat, shirt ironed and buttoned up to his collar - too big on him, like everything else he owns, because he's a tiny little thing like a baby bird, all sharp angles and soft skin and round blue eyes like Bucky's lucky marble that he always carries in his pocket, even to Sunday school - and he's got his rosary in his hands, Jesus on his cross hanging between his knees as he listens, rapt, to the story of Noah being read out of the big illustrated children's Bible like they haven't heard it a thousand times before. Bucky whispers that exact sentiment to him in an undertone, and is shushed quietly; Steve wants to be an altar boy this year, now that he's finally old enough, and he's determined that not even Bucky's asides, which always make him laugh when they're not cooped up inside this musty little room, will prevent him from reaching that goal.
Bucky pouts, crossing his arms, and gazes around the room, fruitlessly searching for something else to distract himself. Steve glances at him a couple of times before elbowing him gently in the ribs, whispering "Bucky, we're meant to be listening!" Bucky rolls his eyes at him like he's seen his elder cousins do at their Ma when they're sassing her, and Steve sighs in frustration. Bucky feels bad for making Steve upset, and he definitely doesn't want to get his friend into trouble and stop him from being an altar boy (possibly the one thing in Steve's life he's ever wanted with his whole heart and been able to actually get, as hard as Sarah tries for him - Bucky's Ma sometimes even tries to give her money for groceries, saying that it's for a treat for Steve, or else gives Steve pieces of Bucky's old school uniform that he's outgrown, but Steve's Ma always says a kind but firm No, thank you. Bucky is sure she's where Steve gets his stubbornness from.), but he always gets so bored whenever he has to sit still for a long time, and it's usually Steve who helps him get the ants out of his pants (more than once literally) and up to mischief.
"James Barnes!" Sister Mary Ann snaps, in her thin, wavering voice - the Sister is well over seventy, and has been teaching the Sunday school classes for long enough that she taught Bucky's father before him - and lays the book down, narrowing her pale eyes at him. "I'm sorry, children, but one in our midst seems to be struggling to behave himself. James, sit still and listen, or else I'll be getting your mother out here to hold you in her lap like a baby to make you sit still. Is that what you want?"
Bucky glares at her, cheeks flushing with humiliation. As the Sister said, it's only the babies who have their mothers or older siblings come in with them to sit them on their knees and keep them still and quiet during the lessons, and he is most definitely no longer a baby. Childish embarrassed anger simmers in his mind and he visualises poking the Sister over and over with his favourite toy sword (a stick, really, that he'd found in the park, and yet he refused to let go of it and insisted that he was playing at being the Fearsome Pirate Bucky when his mother told him to drop it because they were leaving), but he squirms in his seat and answers, "No, Sister," in his most sullen voice.
"Good. Now be a good boy and sit still. The other children want to hear the story, and you don't want to make them sad, do you?"
Another sullen "No, Sister."
"Good boy. Sit tight then and we'll finish the story, and then head back to Mass so you can all join in with the last hymn. Today's is All Things Bright And Beautiful, you all like that one, don't you, children?"
A chorus of "Yes, Sister," comes back from everyone except Bucky. Sister Mary Ann narrows her eyes at him, and Steve elbows him, but he still won't say it. Eventually the nun leaves him be, sniffing superciliously and casting her attention back to the other kids in the room, but Steve's eyes never leave the side of his face, frown burning into Bucky's cheek.
Steve is accepted as an altar boy later that month, at the beginning of their after school First Holy Communion classes. He couldn't have been more excited as he holds out the white gown to show Bucky, beaming all over his small face, and Bucky congratulates him as a good friend should. He wouldn't have been an altar boy even if Father Jameson had visited his house to beg him (and his Ma said he didn't have the patience for one, either, because it involved an awful lot of sitting around waiting for the next cue from the priest, and being only seven, he wouldn't be allowed to do any of the good stuff like lighting the candles or carrying the big, heavy crucifix staff around the church at the start of Mass. He'd been allowed to ring the bell for one Mass in the past, but was quickly fired afterwards because he liked how it sounded a little too much, and had continued to ring it almost incessantly all the way through Mass.)
This Sunday morning, Steve isn't sat in his usual place - on the cushion beside Bucky in the Barnes and Rogers families' pew towards the front - but at the absolute front of the church, to the side of the altar, dressed in his long white gown like a baby angel. Bucky fidgets and squirms even more during that mass, biting his lip and picking at the scabs on his knees purely to give himself some outlet for all his restless energy, until his Ma threatens to take him outside and put him over her knee, and he has to stop. His father winks at him behind her back, but presses a finger to his lips nevertheless as the congregation kneels to repeat the Hail Mary after Father Jameson.
"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee-"
Steve at the front is kneeling on the step beside Matthew, the other regular altar boy, who even on his knees is a good two feet taller than Steve himself and beginning to get signs of early-onset acne around his jaw as he approaches thirteen. Steve's neatly-combed tow head is bowed over his interlinked hands, mouth muttering the words right along with the priest; Bucky can almost hear him from where he's sitting, and he is desperate to make Steve laugh like he usually does by throwing funny words into the middle of the prayer. But Steve is entirely focused on acting like a good little altar boy, Bucky thinks sourly, and glowers at the back of his friend's head as his mother shoots him a glare and nods at the kneeler cushion, telling him in her steely, no-words-needed mother's way to get on his knees and respect the Lord like he's been taught.
"Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Sneezus-"
"James!" His mother hisses, eyes flashing, but Bucky isn't looking at her. His eyes are fixed on Steve at the front, trying to see if his mouth is twitching or his shoulders trembling the way they always do whenever he's trying to restrain a laugh. "James Barnes, you stop that right this minute-" She looks like she wants to say something else for a moment before shaking her head angrily and crossing herself, still glaring at her son. "I mean it-"
"Holy Mary, mother of the bread man-"
"James!"
Steve still isn't laughing. Bucky thinks that joke was actually sort of clever, since the bread is supposed to be the body of Jesus and the wine (which only his Ma and Pa are allowed to drink) is his blood. There's a scuffle on his pew as his mother grabs his arm and yanks him out, walking up to the end of the aisle and through the big wooden double doors out into the yard. She spins him around to look at her and she looks furious.
"James, what in the name of the Lord-" she crosses herself again, "do you think you were doing in there? It's Sunday, we're in church - God's watching us, James, and you can't be saying things like that when the Lord's got his eye on you. I brought you up to be a nice young man, not some sort of little heathen who messes with the prayers in Sunday Mass - you wait until your father finds out about this, young man, he'll tan your hide-"
Bucky looks sadly back at the church, the closed doors and the long aisle between himself and Steve. Now he's never going to find out whether he succeeded in making him laugh. He kicks stubbornly at a stone by his toe, and his mother grabs his arm again.
"You pull that again, young man, and so help me I will take you out here and put you over my knee. You're never too old, James, and God knows-" she crossed herself yet again - "Heaven knows you deserve it sometimes. I never raised you to be so disrespectful." She sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose between two soft, manicured fingers. "Now you get back in there, you say your Hail Mary properly and then again to tell her you're sorry, and you behave yourself for the rest of the Mass."
She opens the doors and chivvies him inside again, apologising quickly to the people they disturb as they pass, and gently pushes him into their pew space. She kneels quickly the way all the adults do before entering the pews, and Bucky glances around for Steve anxiously. He's still at the front, still got his head bowed as Father Jameson continues with the Glory Be, and he's not looking at Bucky, nor is he laughing - or even smiling.
Bucky feels the absurd, babyish urge to cry, and rubs his knuckles fiercely against his eyes to stop the tears from coming. He's not going to let himself cry in church. Not with God watching, and laughing at him because he can't get his best friend in the whole world to look at him even once for the remaining ten minutes of Mass.
The next Friday, Father Jameson is looking for little boys to join the choir. They meet every Wednesday, he says, and they get to sing for Friday evening Mass and on Sundays, all the hymns that everyone else gets to do and then some special bits too. Steve immediately puts up his hand, and, seeing that, so does Bucky. A couple of others do too, and by the end, Father has five or six boys all willing to at least go through a scale or two to see whether they can join. He seems especially pleased that Steve wants to do this as well as being altar boy on Sundays; less enthused, perhaps, about the idea of having to deal with Bucky at the same time (no doubt remembering Bucky's short but enthusiastic stint as miniature campanologist), but he should've learned by now - as everyone else has - that you never get Bucky Barnes or Steve Rogers alone without the other, anywhere.
Not even in church.
At the end of class, once they've been through the prayers they'll have to learn by heart for the ceremony in a month's time (Glory Be, Hail Mary, the Apostle's Creed - all ones that even Bucky knows by heart already - and then a couple of new ones, the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel and the Act of Contrition), he takes them back into the church and they fill the front pew in a neat little row, each waiting for his turn to be called to sing. Andrew is first, a mop-headed boy with a loose front tooth with whom Bucky often plays marbles in the schoolyard; he passes, just about, and is allowed to go. Next George, then Freddy, and Oliver, and Pat; finally, just Bucky and Steve are left. Bucky is called first.
Father Jameson sits at the organ and plays a few notes that he has to try and match. Bucky isn't trying particularly hard, because he doesn't really need to - he is a good singer, the Music master at school tells him, and his sense of pitch is all right - but he does have to concentrate when the hymn O Little Town of Bethlehem is played and he has to remember the words. (They only sing that at Christmas, of course, and it's already March. Plenty of time for him to forget most of the words.) He manages one and a half verses.
"Well done, James," Father Jameson says, smiling, "I'd certainly like to see you in the choir. Tell your mother to have you here at six o'clock in Wednesday."
"Okay," Bucky says, and takes his place next to Steve again on the pew.
"James, you may go," the priest tells him, gesturing towards the door. "I've heard you now. I'm sure Steven doesn't need an audience."
"I'm stayin'," Bucky insists stubbornly, folding his arms and mentally daring Father Jameson to make him leave. Steve is his best friend; Bucky would wait til the end of time for him if he had to, whatever he was doing. They don't go anywhere without each other, never ever. The priest doesn't look particularly happy about that, but Bucky isn't backing down (not that a seven year old boy would be able to do much to resist a grown man forcibly removing him from the church, but he could always aim a kick between the legs, a dirty-fighting tactic he'd learned witnessing a back-alley brawl a while ago and is secretly itching to try out), so he acquiesces and lets Bucky stay.
"I don't mind," Steve says quietly, his voice trembling a little. He's nervous, Bucky realises. Which is silly - of course he'll be let in. Bucky loves nothing better than to hear Steve sing, even if it sometimes makes their school Music master wince when his voice wobbles pitchily around a note; Bucky loves Steve's voice, the way he's softly spoken and gentle with his words, sometimes nervous, sometimes bubbly and full of mischief when he's cooked up another hare-brained plan he wants Bucky to get in on. Steve has to get in, for sure.
His voice - usually clear as a bell - comes out as a croak, and Steve flinches. He knows he's blown it. Bucky knows he's blown it. But it's probably just another throat infection, or allergies to the dusty church, or something. Steve's always coming down with some ailment or another, or allergic to something else; there's barely any time in Bucky's entire collective memory that he can remember Steve being fully hale and hearty. He's just one of those kinds of boys.
"I'm sorry, Steven," Father Jameson says regretfully, his eyes soft and sad, "but it sounds like your throat is a touch under the weather. Maybe try again when you're feeling better?"
"But I always sing like that," Steve says miserably, and Bucky stares at him in confusion for a minute. No he doesn't, he's sure he's never heard Steve sing like that in his life - Steve's voice is sweet and pure as water, flutish on the high notes and rock steady on the low ones, and occasionally he's flat and maybe he misses the timings a little when they have to sing for school choir but his voice is Bucky's favourite sound in the whole world. Is he hearing things? Has he imagined those times? Or worse, is he hearing someone else's voice and his ears are playing tricks on him, pretending it's Steve's? They can't be. He doesn't understand.
"I'm sorry, Steven. Maybe next time." Father Jameson looks genuinely sorry. Bucky feels like he's been turned upside down and shaken real hard, until his ears have fallen off and gotten switched with somebody else's. Because Steve doesn't sing like that. He doesn't.
Friday night Mass is over, and Bucky has changed out of his choir gown (similar to Steve's, but with a stripe of colour around the square collar). He's heading down the stairs from the choir loft when he hears Father Jameson's voice asking Steve to help him tidy away all of the things in the vestibule, and Steve's piping little voice agreeing. He follows the sound of their footsteps, glancing up every so often to make sure they haven't noticed him - not entirely sure why he's acting like a secret spy on a mission, but he likes that idea and transforms, in his mind, from Bucky Barnes, eight year old kid, to J. B. Barnes, super spy secret agent on the tail of a mystery. His Ma likes mystery books; Bucky sometimes gets her to read them to him, when they're not too scary, and he loves hearing about what Her-kool (as his Ma calls the main character) is getting up to in the latest of her spy detective novels.
They don't know he's there, he doesn't think, so he activates his super-spy stealth walk and creeps along the corridor behind the secret doors by the altar, and hides behind the opened door to spy on them. Spying on Steve gives him a guilty flip-flopping sensation in his stomach; but spying on Father Jameson feels like he's Her-kool going after the bad guys, and he's determined to find out what's going on. (In part, he is just curious about what the vestibule looks like. He's never been this far into the church before; never progressed past the main cross-shaped part, with the pews and the altar and the Virgin Mary standing in her little alcove surrounded by candles in racks.)
Father Jameson is moving stacks of the choir gowns around, packing them into boxes; Steve is picking the crumpled ones off the floor, trying to smooth them with his small hands. Bucky watches as he presses them to his tiny pigeon chest, trying to fold them neatly like his Ma does with his clothes, but he can't quite manage it. Father Jameson takes his hands and shows him how, gently murmuring instructions; Steve looks up at him with wide blue eyes and nods, looking back down at his hands as the priest takes him through the motions.
"Like this, look - this corner to this corner, so they don't crease."
"Yes, Father."
"You're a good boy, Steven. Thank you for helping me with this. You're a good boy."
"My Ma says I'm a hellion when I want to be," Steve says, innocently, and the priest laughs, nodding his head.
"I'm sure you are. All little boys get up to mischief sometimes. But you're a good boy here, aren't you?"
"Yeah, 'cause God is watching. That's what my Ma says."
"That's right. He is. Clever boy."
Steve hands him the last, crookedly-folded gown, and Father Jameson packs it away. He looks back at Steve and smiles.
"Hold on a moment. I need yours, too." He holds out one hand - creased in the palm, and too pink, Bucky thinks. Too pink like a salmon's insides at the market; too pink, his nails cut short and no ring on his finger like Bucky's Pa has. He doesn't trust a man without a ring on, he decides; that sounds like something Her-kool would think, and he nods to himself, satisfied with his detective-thinking. Steve is a clever boy, Father Jameson said, but Bucky is a smart lad, too.
Steve blushes a little. "Oh, right." He pulls the gown over his head, leaving himself in his too-small thermal vest - always thermal, even on warm days, else he'd catch a chill or a fever, Bucky knows. Steve is always catching chills and fevers. His Ma has to keep him off school sometimes, because he's too sick to go. Bucky always misses him those days, and brings him bunches of crumpled, wilted flowers from the weed patches in the schoolyard, dandelions and weak little daisies, stems crushed in his fists as he runs home to give them to Steve. Steve has a special cup he calls his Flowers Cup in his bedroom, specially for Bucky's flowers. That makes Bucky feel extra proud.
Father Jameson is watching as Steve folds the gown carefully against his chest before passing it over. Steve starts looking for his shirt, and Father Jameson puts the gown away. But he puts the box down right on Steve's shirt, and he's watching Steve hunt with a funny look on his face that makes Bucky's tummy do another flip, this time making him feel queasy. He doesn't like this at all - he's not supposed to be watching, but Steve's not supposed to be here, either - nobody's supposed to be looking at Steve like that, not when he's this little, and Bucky can't do anything about it because then they'll know he was super-spying and they'll tell his Ma and he'll get into trouble - but Steve's in trouble, he's sure of it -
He bursts into the room anyway, and Father Jameson's head whips around to stare at him at the same time as Steve's does. The difference is, Steve smiles, albeit a little confusedly, whereas Father Jameson is looking angry. Bucky tries to speak, but only makes a croaking noise, so he gives a little cough and tries to force his voice steady, trying to look like he's not trembling. Steve is only little - even for a six-not-quite-seven-yet boy - and Bucky is bigger. It's only fair that Bucky stand up for him, especially to people so much bigger than Steve. The fact that Father Jameson is so much bigger than Bucky isn't really registering at the moment; he just wants him to stop staring at Steve like that. It ain't right.
"I was waitin' for you, but you was takin' your time so I came to see if I could help," he says to Steve, and Steve nods. Bucky is looking at Father Jameson with hard Her-kool eyes; saying, I know you're the bad guy, and you're damn right (People in the Her-kool books always say that, but his Ma doesn't when she's reading him the stories. Bucky only knows they say it from trying to read them himself, but he had to stop when his Ma caught him with one under his pillow and gave him a talking-to about staying up reading past his bedtime.) I'm here to stop you.
Father Jameson smiles at Steve and says, "Oh, silly me - it's here, under this box." He lifts the box up and passes Steve his shirt; Steve puts it on, carefully buttoning it up, and Bucky doesn't take his eyes off Steve's hands, watching the buttons close his shirt and swallow more of his skinny body up behind a curtain of material, feeling triumphant.
He can also feel Father Jameson's eyes burning into the back of his neck.
"See you on Sunday for Mass, Steven," Father Jameson says, his voice strange and prickly in Bucky's ears, and Steve smiles at him over his shoulder and chirrups, "See you on Sunday!"
Yeah, Bucky thinks, slinging his arm protectively over Steve's shoulders and hanging on even when Steve tries to shrug him off, See you on Sunday.
Bucky sticks to Steve like glue at church now; takes a different seat, right at the front of the church directly behind where Steve always sits now, sitting still as stone the whole time but for the movement of his head, watching Father Jameson like a hawk. Steve shoots him confused glances every so often - not used to Bucky looking like he's concentrating so hard on what's going on in Mass - but Bucky just gives him a satisfied smile, letting him know that it's okay, he has the situation under control. It doesn't even occur to him that maybe Steve doesn't think that there is a situation until after Mass one Sunday where they're outside whilst their Mas talk about whatever Mas talk about, and Steve brings it up with confusion and suspicion written all over his honest face.
"Why're you always at the front in church now? You never cared about it b'fore."
"I'm super-spyin'," Bucky tells him conspiratorially, and Steve laughs.
"Who're you super-spying on?"
"Father Jameson, a'course!"
"Why?" Steve chuckles, brows knitting slightly.
It hits Bucky like a tonne of bricks. Steve has no idea - Steve, trusting little Steve, has no idea what's going on. He doesn't feel that gut reaction that Bucky always has to the way the priest looks at him - hungry, kinda like Steve's something he wants a bite out of - the look that gets Bucky's hackles rising and his little chest puffed out and fists balled, ready to leap to Steve's rescue. The priest looks at Bucky an awful lot more, too; he watches him almost much as he watches Steve, like he's worried about what Bucky's gonna do. Good. He should be. Bucky's only eight, and half Father Jameson's size if that, but he's not going to let anyone do anything he doesn't like the look or sound of to Steve.
He hesitates. "C'n you keep a secret?"
Steve nods eagerly. He's never a broken a promise in his life, Bucky's sure. But this one is extra important. This is a secret that is keeping Steve safe, out of trouble.
"I don't like him. He gives me the creepers."
That makes Steve laugh. "That ain't a secret, Buck - I knew that the moment you saw him. You always glare at him like he done something to make you mad - he's not so bad, Bucky, he's real nice. I swear. Come to Mass Friday, I'll show you."
"No!" Bucky blurts out, too fast, but it's out now and he can't take it back. And his mouth is steamrollering ahead, his brain trying to tell him to shut up - but that's always been his problem. He can't shut up; his Ma says he could talk for the Olympic gold medal, if chatterboxin' was an event.
"No, you can't! Don't go Friday. Please. You can't go, he'll - he'll look at you like that again, he's gonna hurt you, Stevie, I swear. I don't know how or why, but he gives me the creepers and he should give you 'em, too, with that look - it ain't right, Steve, you can't go Friday -"
"What? What look? Bucky, I have to - I have to go on Friday, it's Mass and I'm altar-servin' - Buck, what are you talking about?" Steve is confused, frowning, but he's starting to cross his arms and lean away from Bucky, like he's getting mad. Bucky gets even more desperate, pleading with Steve to listen to him as he sees their Mas coming out of the corner of his eye, waving goodbye to each other as they come to take them home; he speaks faster, whispering louder, trying to make Steve hear, trying to make him get it -
"Just - please, it's not - it ain't right. Don't go Friday, and don't let him take you back there-" he points to the vestibule - "again. Please, Steve, promise me - promise you won't - swear on your grave -"
"Buck, you're being stupid. You're imaginin' things in your super-spy game, ain't you? There's nothing wrong with him!" Steve insists hotly, glowering at him; he's hurt, confused and angry, and Bucky is upset and frustrated because he's not understanding, not at all, and he needs to -
"Come along, James," his Ma says, taking his hand. Bucky tries to pull away, to go back to Steve, but she laughs and says, "You'll see him at school tomorrow! C'mon, you two aren't so joined at the hip yet. I've still got to make dinner -"
"Promise me, Steve!" Bucky yells to his friend, and Steve just rolls his eyes.
"See you at school, Buck!"
Bucky twists his body around and watches Steve go in anguish; turns his gaze to the church and sees, in the doorway, the figure of Father Jameson, still in his green vestments. Bucky growls low in his throat and makes a very rude gesture at him, which his mother sees and promptly gives him a whack on the knuckles with the flat of her hand and makes a scandalised comment about if your father had seen that! before calling an apology to Father Jameson and poking him, hard, to prompt the same.
Bucky outright refuses, and is sent to his room with no dinner when they get home.
School on Monday is tense between them, until Bucky swallows his pride and hurt at Steve not believing him and brings him another handful of crushed dandelions, including a just-bloomed poppy for variety. Steve looks for a moment like he's contemplating throwing them on the ground, but then smiles and he's clearly forgiven. By lunchtime, they're up to their usual mischief of trying to climb the drainpipes to get Bucky's favourite rubber ball down from the guttering, and getting caught by the teacher on supervision duty that afternoon. Steve just shoots him that mischievous grin he always saves just for Bucky, and he grins back.
The rest of the week passes in the same fashion - i.e., as normal - until Friday and their Holy Communion class rolls around. Suddenly Bucky's fears are at the forefront of his mind again, and he's stiflingly protective of Steve again the moment that Father Jameson steps through the door, smiling at them all. He has to fight the urge to try that fighting trick, but he edges his chair closer to Steve with narrowed eyes. Steve scowls at him and edges away again, and Bucky doesn't think he's imagining the infinitesimal widening of Father Jameson's smile, the smug glint in his eyes as he turns to look right at Bucky. Bucky wants to spit at him.
He doesn't, though, and he doesn't stop until he's edged Steve almost into a corner; he can feel the fury radiating off Steve's tiny frame, his eyes boring into the side of Bucky's head, but he's too afraid of what the priest will do to move away. Father Jameson, however, takes the decision out of his hands by instructing Adam - on the other side of the classroom - to swap places with Bucky; Bucky puts up a hell of a fight, shouting and screaming, and it's only when Steve snaps at him in an awful, cold voice Bucky has never heard him use before to move away and leave him the hell alone that he stops. Father Jameson doesn't even chide him for the curse; just smiles indulgently at him whilst Bucky stares at Steve with eyes full of tears and hurt, betrayal washing through him, and he miserably takes his place by the outer wall obediently. Not to please Father Jameson, but because Steve told him to.
He won't let himself cry this time either, though. Not with Father Jameson watching, that smug look on his face again like it was Christmas morning and he'd woken up with all the presents having his name on. Bucky rubs his eyes fiercely and bottles it up; bottles it up until he gets home, where he flings himself on his bed and cries into his pillow, bawls like his heart is breaking, and screams at his mother when she tries to ask him what's wrong. He gets sent to bed with no dinner again for that, but as he is already on his bed - and far too miserable to eat, even when he usually has the appetite of a particularly ravenous horse - he doesn't much care.
He sobs himself to sleep, hating Father Jameson for driving this wedge between himself and Steve, and angry with Steve (an unfamiliar and sickening sensation he despises) for allowing him to do it. Friends look after each other, Buck, he always said. That's all Bucky has been trying to do. Look after him.
Being rejected for doing so feels worse than anything else Bucky has ever felt.
He almost doesn't go to church on Sunday. All weekend he's been in a foul mood, snapping at his family, and his Ma had quickly grown sick of stepping on eggshells around him and given him the ultimatum that if he didn't buck up his ideas and behave himself, stop being so rude to her and his father, that he'd be grounded and not be allowed to see Steve outside of school for a week. He almost tells her that it wouldn't even make a difference.
At church, Steve is still mad with him. His eyes are narrowed and hard as flints when he scowls at Bucky, and he feels a stabbing in his chest as he slopes to the front, again, to assume his spot. But someone is already sitting in it, and every spot near it for three rows. All the pews are full, from the front to the third row where his parents sit, full of people he's never seen before. He doesn't want to think that this is Father Jameson finding another way to get around him, but what else is he supposed to think, seeing this? Unless -
Unless it was Steve. Steve encouraging people to sit there, to keep Bucky away from him. His head shoots up. Steve is still glaring at him, nodding to his parents' pew with a Get in there face, and Bucky's heart - already fragile from from last week - cracks right in two.
Okay. He can watch Steve from here. He can - he can protect Steve from here.
He knows he's lying to himself.
The fight, when the tension between them during the Mass finally reaches boiling point, is horrific. Bucky is crying, Steve is screaming in his face; screaming that he doesn't need Bucky to protect him all the time, that Bucky not leaving him alone and constantly being in his face is infuriating, that if Bucky so much as thinks about touching him right now, then God help him - he crosses himself, just like Bucky's Ma - he will sock Bucky in the face with all his strength. It'd be like getting bitten by a gnat in reality, but the fact that Steve is so angry with him hurts much worse, far more deeply, than any punch ever could.
"Steve - Stevie, listen t'me - p-please -" he begs, trying to catch Steve's balled fists in his hands; he doesn't even see the swing coming, Steve making good on his promise, until it lands, smack in the middle of his face, and he goes down like a sack of bricks. It was a weak punch, barely smarts, but the shock of it - the shock of Steve actually hitting him - is what floors Bucky, making his heart pound and his head ache and the tears flow down his cheeks. He doesn't understand this feeling (the hurt, yes, the betrayal, also yes, but this intense ache - the gut-deep, soul-destroying ache of feeling unsure and sick and frightened to his core, he doesn't understand.) He's pinned to the ground by that alone; Steve, at half his height, suddenly towering over him like an avenging angel.
"I don't want to! He ain't done nothing to me, Bucky, and he ain't gonna - you're stupid, para-p-paran-noid -" he struggles with the word and it makes Bucky's chest ache even more, his stupid head screaming at him for wrecking this, the most precious thing he has, even though he knows he was right, he has to have been, he would never have risked this on something he wasn't certain of - "and e-even if he was bad, which he ain't - he wouldn't dare! Not in a church! He's a priest, Barnes, he knows that God's watchin' in a church!"
Barnes hurts. Steve has never refused to use his name before. But Bucky is getting angry too, now, refusing to continue to lie here and be Steve's punching bag, so he hits back, and aims low and dirty, where it'll cut deepest.
"You're stupid for believin' him - stupid for thinkin' that some old guy with a beard in the sky'll keep you safe when I'm here, right here, tryin' to do that right now - you're stupid for believing in God when he don't exist - he don't exist, or he wouldn't let that dirty old man do what he's doin' to you -"
Steve stares at him in disbelief; with what could almost be disgust, lingering in the corners of his eyes. Bucky is disgusted with himself. Too weak, too easily manipulated to be able to help Steve. Can't make him see, can't make him understand - can't make him do anything but get angry and lash out, flash that hot Steve Rogers temper and blast everything in his path to cinders. Including Bucky himself.
He's cold as ice when he snaps, "You shouldn't come back here."
"I shouldn't. I won't."
"Good," Steve turns on his heel, and storms away - and Bucky wonders if he's just lost his best friend for good.
They can barely stand to look at each other at school. Steve is silent on his side of the desk, and ignores everything Bucky does completely. The teacher, the rest of the class - they're all mystified, utterly perplexed by the icy atmosphere between Barnes and Rogers when the pair of them were usually as thick as thieves. Bucky stares out of the window, ignoring not just Steve but everyone else as well, as though he isn't even in the room, completely absent from all proceedings. When he gets yelled at by the teacher, Steve doesn't stick up for him. Doesn't do anything but keep his head down and keep diligently working away at his page of math problems, biting his pencil and scowling.
When he needs an eraser, he doesn't take the one from Bucky's open pencil box. Doesn't even ask to borrow it. He gets up out of his chair and crosses over to Michael Dumont at the back of the class in the opposite corner, and borrows his. Anyone close to Bucky is, apparently, Bucky by proximity; he would've left the entire classroom to borrow an eraser from the fifth graders next door who were untainted by Bucky's presence, had he been allowed to.
Neither of them say they're sorry. They're too goddamn stubborn for that. Bucky just sits, silently stewing, hurt mounting inside him but feeling, above all, lonely. He misses Steve desperately. They've not been apart like this since they met when the pair of them were still in diapers, their Mas meeting when Steve's Ma was on a paediatric rotation and she weighed the infant Bucky Barnes on the baby scales, and told Bucky's Ma all about her own little boy. They had a play date whilst their mothers had coffee, and by the time the hour or so was over they were bawling their loud little baby lungs out and reaching for each other whilst Bucky's Ma tried to say goodbye over the din.
They're stubborn, but they're not heartless. Bucky looks over and sees Steve's eyes swimming with tears; he's writing in the margins of his exercise book, pencil scratching darker and darker over the same words, repeated as many times as Steve can fit in his neat, small handwriting: I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. His chest twinges, and a tiny, bull-headed part of him tries to say that the sorry isn't good enough, that Steve deserves to cry and ask for Bucky's forgiveness for putting him through that - but it's smothered under the tidal wave of thank God and I'm sorrys from Bucky himself, and he shuffles closer on his chair to wrap Steve in a one-armed hug. Steve chokes softly and a tear drips off the tip of his nose; Bucky smears the rest away with the pad of his thumb and mumbles that he's sorry, too.
"I thought you were gonna hate me," Steve whimpers quietly, the moment they're let out for recess, and Bucky shakes his head fiercely, hugging him all the tighter. Steve rests his head on Bucky's shoulder and listens to the jumping of his heart behind his ribcage as Bucky insists, "I wouldn' never hate you. Never. You're my best friend, Stevie."
"Always?" Steve asks, voice a little stronger.
"Always, forever an' ever. Til the end of the line, I swear to God."
Steve swats weakly at him. "Don't take the Lord's name in vain." But he grins, albeit a little watery, and Bucky's heart is soaring, soaring, mended and full of light and Steve, Steve, Steve.
He still skips church every Sunday, running out before his Ma can collar him and comb his hair flat and dress him in his Sunday best, but he lingers outside to wait until the doors open at the end of the Mass, and then comes in to collect Steve. And his friend is always waiting for him. Never in the back with Father Jameson, never in the choir room or loft, never alone. Always in their family pew, head bowed over his hands, and when he looks up at Bucky it's like he's seen all the saints holding out their hands to welcome him to heaven. Bucky pulls him up and into a hug, ruffles his neat blond hair until he looks like Steve-his-friend again instead of Steve-the-altar-boy, and doesn't even think about Father Jameson because he and Steve are going to be just fine without him.
He has to go to the classes, though. And by the end of the run - when they've both completed all their classes, all the work they had to do for it, and have practised walking down the aisle together to receive (Bucky humming 'Here Comes The Bride', and Steve laughing and thumping him on the arm, both of them getting told off for clowning around), it's the first Sunday of May, Easter having just passed last week, and they're stood with the nine other kids from their class, all dressed in snowy white dresses or pressed white shirts, dark slacks and that blood-red tie. The boys have their bell-shaped Communion pendant pinned to their shirt fronts; the girls have it on a white ribbon around their necks. Steve is shaking; Bucky is as calm as can be. He's there with Steve, and they're friends. In the house of God, with Him watching.
Bucky takes Steve's hand - briefly, tentatively - and repeats his promise. "Til the end of the line, Stevie."
"Shouldn't it be the aisle in here?" Steve mumbles, joking weakly, and Bucky smiles.
"The aisle, the line, it don't matter. S'you and me, til the end of everythin'. Forever and ever."
"Okay," Steve nods, and the ceremony begins.
The ceremony begins with organ music, some hymn that Bucky vaguely knows the words to from once at choir practice, but can't quite remember. The congregation - mostly proud parents, including his own mother, beaming at him, and Steve's Ma looking like she's wiping away tears in her hankie - sings along, though, and drowns out his fudging and la-laing when he comes to a bit he doesn't know. That sets Steve off with the silent giggles, and Bucky gets caught in them as well, trying to keep a straight face when Sister Mary Ann's eagle eye lands on the pair of them. That only makes Steve worse, until he gets the hiccoughs and "huc! - huc!"s his way through the whole thing. Everything goes fine - the homily, the liturgy, the speeches from their classmates reading from passages of the Bible - until they reach the Apostle's Creed.
"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell."
Bucky is shaking, whey-faced, clinging to Steve's hand as they recite. Steve's voice rings clear, full of conviction and faith and trust. Listening to his own whispered, barely audible voice, Bucky has never heard more doubt and fear than he does at that moment, as he lies aloud under the watchful eye of the Almighty.
"The third day, He arose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead."
Bucky can't tear his eyes away from the enormous wooden crucifix mounted on the wall behind the altar; the image of Jesus, cast in his suffering, his pleading face and upturned eyes, pain and despair making his chest heave, hands and feet pierced by cruel iron nails. He had suffered so much to absolve Bucky of his sins, of all the terrible things he has done and will do in his lifetime, and yet Bucky is here looking up into his impassioned, desperate face and speaking untruths, blasphemies. He should be burning up on the spot; there should be the Devil climbing out of his fiery pit in the ground, smirking at him and grasping him with flaming fingers around the wrist, laughing as he tried to twist away, laughing in his dark, booming voice, the names of the damned, James Buchanan Barnes James Buchanan Barnes JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES-
"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins-" Please, thinks Bucky - "the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting."
He glances at Steve, his legs weak, his head swimming. His stomach is roiling, as though he's about to vomit; he can feel cold sweat on his forehead and gluing his shirt to his back. Steve squeezes his hand gently, and repeats after Father Jameson, "Amen."
Bucky's head is too light, spinning on the knife edge of collapse as he watches Father Jameson slide open the door to the confessional. This is what comes next; having to sit in the dark, claustrophobic box, and tell God and His priest that everything he just said was a lie.
Again, he and Steve are left til last, but this time, Steve is invited up first. He shares an anxious glance with Bucky before tugging the confessional box open and slipping inside. Bucky tortures himself with thoughts of what could be going on in there - what could be being said in there - Steve, along with Father Jameson, a recipe for disaster - until Steve leaves, tears in his eyes, and he feels his blood boil.
He storms in there - and the fight seeps out of him like air out of a punctured tyre.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."
"Yes, James," the cold voice intones from the other side of the slat, the voice of God inside his head. "You have."
He's shaking, feeling sick, airless inside the box like a coffin. He can barely choke out the beginning of the Act of Contrition - getting as far as 'O my God, I am heartfully sorry-' before erupting into tears. He cries and cries, unable to speak through the force of his sobs. He retches weakly, bile splattering his new, brightly-polished shoes, and it only makes him cry harder. He's only a little boy. For all that he acts tough, acts like the big man who doesn't have a care in the world, who can take anyone on - he's a frightened little kid, and he knows he's done grievous wrong. He just wants to be forgiven, but he doesn't know how to ask; doesn't even know how to say what he's done, how to put it into a words - all of it.
There's a noise from the other side of the box, shifting of weight, the door opening, closing again, and then a soft, kind voice - the voice belonging to the junior priest who sometimes leads Mass and sometimes teaches the Sunday school, the one with the soft brown eyes like warm chocolate and the gentle, patient gaze that wraps you up like a blanket, soothes every woe and calms you like sinking into a hot bath - speaks to him quietly:"Hello, James. Are you ready to make your confession?"
"I - I -" he stammers, stomach full of pins and needles, bile sour in his throat. He's terrified he's going to vomit again, and slams his mouth closed, pressing a hand over his lips as more comes up and he gags, tears streaming from beneath his closed eyelids, sick damp and acidic over his fingers; he coughs, coughs it up, and wipes his hand shakily on his trousers when he's done. The priest doesn't say a word, until:
"It's okay. Take all the time you need. It can be a big thing, or a little thing, anything at all. God is listening. God will forgive you."
No he won't, Bucky thinks, and he starts to talk.
He flees that church like a demon out of hell. He'd been given just one penance - an Our Father, with his rosary in his hand as his face upturned to the roof where God would be able to see him, see into his mind and the empty space in his ribs, and turn his back. He can't do it. There's no way one Our Father will cover what he'd said; what he'd confessed to. He is damned, marked by Lucifer for Hell, and he would have to break his promise to Steve. Til the end of the line, he said. How could he do that - how could he drag Steve down with him, pure, innocent, good Steve?
He can't. So he runs out of that church, away from God and his watchers, and tries to push all thoughts of Heaven, hell and everything in between out of his mind.