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English
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Published:
2017-06-18
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713
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1/1
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Pray For Us Sinners (Now And At The Hour Of Our Death)

Summary:

Fill for this prompt: Pre-War Bucky self-hatred and internalized homophobia. Bucky sleeps around so much because he doesn’t know how to deal with the badwrong feelings he has for his best friend.

Work Text:

The first time Bucky Barnes finds a man beautiful he is ten years old, and he knows it means damnation.

The man is unloading crates of oranges for the local grocery store, the light catching his skin and Bucky feels his cheeks burn. (He knows this means further burning down the line).

Everyone knows these things; that boys who like boys go to hell, just like everyone knows that the hungry looking boys hanging out in Times Square are waiting for men with money. “Disgusting” says the man who runs the newsstand Bucky and Steve frequent, in the same tone used by older boys at school and by women who live on their block.

When Bucky learns what he is, he’s known that it’s wrong for years. (He knows something else, though. He knows how to survive).

He walks Laura Chalmers home, carrying her books, because she’s pretty, and because the whole block talks about how love sick he is, walking past his own home to spend more time with a girl with black curls. (Bucky notices men with straight gold hair, the kind that catches the light).

Laura’s parents are just as Catholic as his, and he knows that he’ll never be alone with her, and no one will notice that he doesn’t kiss her. No one except Steve, who cocks his head and says “you smile funny at her”. (A fake smile, is what he doesn’t say).

Bucky tries.

He chases girls, teaches himself to kiss them, to hold them, to touch them, even spend the night with them, but it doesn’t work. At night he dreams of men, solid and stubbled against him. (He doesn’t feel all that guilty about it, until he dreams of Steve).

Bucky wants to do right by Steve, he really does. Steve’s sick and small and no one questions the way Bucky protects him. But Steve is also sharp, and funny, and he has such a big heart. Bucky wants to touch his lips and he hates himself for it. For being so weak, so twisted inside. (Steve deserves so much better than someone as sick as Bucky is).

So Bucky helps with rent, and won’t take Steve up his offer to share the bed and spends half an hour every night praying that he’ll wake up better. (Cured).

Maybe one day he won’t be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, salivating at lambs like Steve. (Maybe one day he’ll be good). Maybe one day he won’t feel an ugly jealous twist when girls smile, politely, at Steve. Maybe one day he won’t make a point of fucking those girls, of knowing that Steve knows. Maybe one day he won’t need to add fifteen more Hail Mary’s to his nightly routine as penance. For now he sticks to setting up double dates where he knows the girl won’t go for Steve. Where he’ll have justification to tell Steve how he got the other girl in bed. (Because he needs to hurt Steve a little so he can never get close enough to hurt Steve a lot).

And then the War comes.

(Bucky doesn’t want to leave Steve, so he has to). Steve will be safe. Safe from the war, safe from Bucky. In fact, he’s so stupidly sure that Steve will be okay, that he lets himself dream of Steve when Zola ties him to a table. A little fantasy before he goes. Surely God won’t begrudge him that.

Except that he does, and his retribution is swift.

Steve is not only not safe, but he’s not Steve anymore. Maybe on the inside, but on the outside he looks like every wet dream Bucky’s ever tried to ignore.

And given how he looks know, any monstrous hope that might have lived in some corner of Bucky’s heart that Steve might just want him back dies a painful death.

This Steve won’t have girl trouble. This Steve would punch Bucky’s lights out. (Bucky knows that’s not true. Steve might be bigger but his heart’s the same. But he’d pity Bucky, and thought would be worse.)

Agent Carter comes to the bar in red, and Bucky tries, one last time to keep Steve to himself. He fails.

(It’s better like this, he thinks. It’s the way God intended.)