Warning: The first paragraph uses the word "colored" to refer to black Americans. My understanding is that this would be the most realistic term for a white person like Bucky to have used in the 30s.
BUCKY
1.3
What is the son but an extension of the father?
July to December 1931
There's something unfair about the fact that his father is so kind to Steve. It's not that Bucky resents this, exactly, and he certainly doesn't want Dad to be cruel to his best friend. But Steve is so many of the things that his father objectively despises: poor, Catholic, and one generation away from being foreign-born. It could really only be worse if he was queer, colored, or Jewish. So why is he always so goddamn nice to Steve?
Maybe Bucky resents it a little.
Ever since Dad learned that he and Steve's father had been in the same regiment during the Great War, he's taken to telling stories about his time in the Army. He talks about serving in the 107th, the nasty rations and enemy fire, fighting alongside his brothers-in-arms. Dad says that he and Joseph Rogers only spoke a few times, but that he seemed like a decent, reliable sort. Sometimes he even claps Steve on the shoulder or ruffles his hair, the way fathers do with their sons; the way he never does with Bucky, unless there's an audience to impress.
His friend laps up the war stories and the gruff, paternal attention like an eager puppy, and Bucky feels like a piece of shit for begrudging Steve these things. He can't help that he grew up without a father, so of course he'd attach himself to any grown man who treats him this way. Bucky's dad might be brutal behind closed doors, but he's unfailingly friendly in front of company.
The worst part is that it isn't an act. Bucky understands his father very well (no matter how he wishes he didn't), and he knows exactly what Dad sees when he looks at Steve: a brave, resilient boy who never lets life's challenges keep him down for long. These are qualities that George Barnes admires, and he doesn't have to say that Steve would be a better son—a child he could be proud of—for both he and Bucky to know it's true.
He can't even blame his father for that, because Bucky is all too aware of his own shortcomings. He's temperamental, sensitive, and vain. Charming when it suits him and mean when it doesn't. Cowardly, if you get right down to it, but he masks his fearful nature with a violent recklessness that most people mistaken for courage. Steve is going to grow into ten times the man that Bucky will ever be, and it's hypocritical to fault Dad for realizing this.
Tonight, Bucky sits on the loveseat in the living room, pretending to read a book while he eavesdrops on Steve's conversation with his father. It's another Army story, so Bucky doesn't fully listen until he hears Joseph Rogers's name.
"What was he like?" Steve asks, and his voice is full of so much yearning, wistful and sad, that Bucky's chest tightens in response.
"We weren't friends, but everyone in the 107th knew that Joseph was strong and brave. Not unlike you," Dad says, and he points at Steve.
"Me? I'm not strong, and—well, guts don't count for much if you can't protect anybody," Steve says hurriedly.
Bucky keeps stealing glances over the top of his novel, so he sees his father smile warmly, an expression he usually reserves for Rebecca.
"James tells me that you stand up for people who can't stand up for themselves," Dad says. "I didn't know your father well, Steven, but I think he'd be proud of the man you're becoming."
Steve ducks his head, cheeks stained a bashful pink, and says, "Thank you, sir."
Bucky tries not to hate his father or envy Steve, but he fails pretty spectacularly on both fronts.
Much later, after Steve is sprawled out on the guest cot in Bucky's room, he lies in his own bed, wide awake. Too nervous, agitated, and thirsty to find any rest. So Bucky gets up and wanders downstairs, tiptoes into the kitchen, and pours himself a glass of water.
It's so dark that he doesn't even realize he isn't alone until his father's voice breaks the shadowed quiet. "Can't sleep?" he asks.
Dad sits at the kitchen table, stiff and straight-backed, too dedicated to maintaining his military posture to bend his stubborn spine, even in the middle of the night.
"Not yet," Bucky says. He drinks his water in one long gulp, sets the glass in the sink, and waits to be dismissed.
Dad pats the chair next to him and says, "Sit. Talk to me."
Bucky takes a wary seat. He almost mirrors his father, but instead of sitting rigidly, he allows himself to slouch. A few minutes pass in silence, and Dad seems unforthcoming with questions, so Bucky decides to pose one of his own.
It's a stupid, heedless thing to say, but he's angry and tired of being constantly careful, so he asks, "If I was more like Steve, would you still beat me?"
His father makes a short, rough sound that might be a laugh. "If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers."
Bucky scowls, because he wants the truth, not some trite saying. "What does that even mean?"
Dad sighs, leans his chair back onto two legs, balancing his weight on precarious twin points. "That excuses are cheap and nearly everybody has one. But I don't believe in excuses."
"That's still not an answer," Bucky says, and he knows he's pushing his luck. Normally, his father would never tolerate this conversation, but he seems to be in an odd mood tonight.
"I wouldn't hit Steve," Dad admits. He lets his chair fall back onto all four legs, and the sound is startlingly loud in the stillness of this sleeping house. "He'd probably never deserve it anyway, and even if he did, he's too fragile. It'd be like kicking a dog."
That pisses Bucky off, because his father's reasoning needs serious adjustment. Steve might be sickly and crippled, but he's tough as nails, just about unbreakable. And Bucky was only three years old the first time (that he can recall) that Dad beat him black and blue. What could possibly be more fragile than a child that small?
Bucky decides to call out his father on the less messy of his misjudgments. "You told Steve he was strong. Was that bullshit?"
"Don't cuss," Dad says, but it's an almost robotic reprimand, more reflexive than meaningful. "No, it wasn't bullshit. Steve is weak-bodied but strong-minded. The opposite of us."
Bucky can't honestly argue with that assessment, but his father's words have made him feel sick, and he doesn't want to talk to him anymore. "Can I go back to bed now?"
Dad waves his hand toward the door. "Get out of here."
Bucky returns to his room, but instead of climbing into his own bed, he sits on the edge of Steve's cot. He takes up more space than somebody so scrawny has any right to, skinny limbs akimbo, one arm dangling off the mattress.
Bucky sleeps just the same way, so whenever he stays over at the Rogers's place, they end up sprawled together, invading each other's halves of the trundle bed. This is one of many reasons why Bucky prefers spending the night with Steve, instead of the other way around. Waking up tangled with his friend is comforting, and it makes him feel less alone.
Bucky needs that closeness right now, so he nudges Steve and whispers, "Scoot over, you punk."
"Bucky?" Steve blinks up at him with bleary eyes, and his voice is thick, dazed. "What're you…"
He fits himself alongside Steve, even though this cot is nowhere near big enough for the both of them. They're pressed right up against each other and still spilling over the edges of the mattress, but Bucky doesn't care, not right now.
"Hey, are you okay?" Steve asks, and he sounds clearer, more concerned than sleepy.
I'm fine, Bucky thinks, but for some reason he can't force the words out. He presses his face against Steve's neck, breathes in the scents of charcoal and cheap soap on his skin. He hopes that getting close enough will help him escape the panic that claws at his insides, that twists his gut into knots and steals his breath. Maybe if he wraps up his body with Steve's he can lose himself altogether.
He slips back into his own bed before dawn. Bucky's ashamed of the way he clung to Steve, and he's a little afraid of what his friend might think of him for it.
Silver sunlight creeps through the blinds within the hour, weak and wan. Bucky lies on his back, listening to Steve's wheezing breaths and the patter of rain against the window, until his alarm sounds. He smacks at the chirping clock, stifling the noise, then drags himself out of bed.
Steve sleeps on, dead to the world, and Bucky has to shake his shoulder to wake him. "Get up, lazybones. Ma's probably about done with breakfast."
Steve grunts, buries his face in his pillow, and grumbles something unintelligible.
Bucky shakes him again, then says, "C'mon, you bum. It's Sunday, and I know you don't want to get dragged to my heathen church without a bellyful of pancakes."
When Steve remains still—either feigning sleep or simply ignoring Bucky with unrepentant audacity—he yanks the pillow out from under his head and smacks him across the ass with it.
Steve yelps, rolls over, and glares at Bucky. "You're a real jerk," he says around a wide yawn, but he crawls off the cot and starts stripping out of his pajamas.
Bucky knows he shouldn't watch, but for some reason he can't keep from looking. Steve has grown some since they met last summer, if not much. He's still short and worryingly thin, and strangers take him for a child of nine or ten often enough to be irritating. Bucky thinks that's dumb, though, because if you look beyond Steve's small stature, then his actual age is obvious, written all over his stubborn, too-serious face.
Steve takes off his pajama pants and pulls his ribbed, white undershirt over his head. Dull morning light catches on his sharp shoulder blades, throwing shadows across the slight curves of his body. His skin is fair and clear, unblemished by the sort of subtle marks that started stretching across Bucky's back in the wake of his recent growth spurt.
Steve glances over his shoulder, frowning, like he could feel Bucky's gaze. "Staring is rude," he says dryly.
"I wasn't," Bucky mutters, and he hurries to change into his own Sunday best.
Steve snorts, steps into his trousers, and says, "Sure, you were just looking off into space. Right at my crooked spine."
Bucky might have been looking a little too closely to be polite, but it wasn't because he finds anything wrong with Steve's body.
"You really think I care about that?" he asks.
Steve shrugs, buckles his belt. "I dunno. Most people do."
Bucky's only half-dressed himself, wearing black pants and socks, but he's still shirtless and shoeless. He walks over to Steve, wraps an around around his naked shoulders, and says, "Maybe I was admiring how pretty you are. Ever think of that?"
"Get off me!" Steve wriggles away, a scowl turning down his pouty mouth, looking every bit as annoyed as Bucky meant to make him.
He can't help but grin. "Jeez, pal, learn how to take a compliment."
Steve shoots him a dirty look as he reaches for his shirt.
As close as they were pressed together last night, Bucky could feel that he didn't sleep in his back brace, and it seems like Steve means to leave it off today too. He doesn't want to nag, not when Sarah already fusses over him all the time, but Bucky has to say something about it.
"Are you gonna wear your brace?" he asks.
Steve stops, his nicest button-down shirt caught in his fist. "Wasn't planning on it," he says softly. "It's sort of impossible to get into it by myself."
Bucky's heart beats faster, but he manages to sound steady and casual when he says, "Well I could help you with that."
He prays that Steve doesn't find his offer offensive or strange, and he rushes to add, "Only if you want to put it on, though. I'm not trying to make you or anything."
"I know," Steve says. He sets aside his shirt, fidgets for a moment, then digs the brace out of his knapsack.
It's made of brown leather and rigid, medical cotton that's starting to turn yellow. Steve wraps the brace around his body, fastens the clasps across the front with practiced efficiency, and mumbles, "I need you to tighten up the buckles on the back."
"Sure. Of course." Bucky rushes over, feeling awkward and oddly aware of his hands.
Steve stands with his forearms against the wall, head bowed.
Bucky fumbles at first, his fingers suddenly shaky and uncooperative, but after a moment he regains some control. He adjusts the straps until the brace appears to fit snugly and asks, "How's that?"
Steve shakes his head. "Needs to be tighter. Stupid thing isn't worth much if it's not cutting off my circulation."
He pulls on the straps again, and then once more at Steve's command, until he can see the leather and stiff cotton digging into pale skin. "How the hell do you breathe in this thing?" he asks.
Steve laughs and says, "Not too well."
Bucky lets go and steps back as soon as he's done. When Steve turns around his face is bright red, his slender shoulders hunched. He won't look up, and his whole body radiates shame.
"Hey. You've got nothing to be embarrassed about," Bucky says, pulling Steve into a loose hug. "You hear me?"
"Don't coddle me. Please? That just makes it worse."
Steve ducks out of his embrace, and Bucky tries not to show how much he hates this—how much he hates it any time they have to stop touching.
Bucky's family takes a short vacation to Indiana in July, same as they do every other summer. He despises these trips, because Shelbyville is in the middle of nowhere, sharing the backseat of the car with Deborah and Rebecca for seven hundred miles is pure hell, and visiting Grandpa and Nana always puts Dad in a foul mood. Everybody knows the reason for his father's displeasure, but they don't discuss it.
They haven't even been in Shelbyville for an hour before Grandpa backhands Dad. It's strange, watching a wrinkled, white-haired man hit his forty-year-old son for talking out of turn, and Bucky has to look away, mildly embarrassed on his father's behalf. (He wonders if this is why Dad never hits him in the face, never strikes him in front of other people. Maybe it's got nothing to do with keeping secrets at all. Maybe he has just enough kindness hidden away somewhere to spare Bucky this sort of humiliation.)
Some small, petty part of him wants to celebrate, because even if he's unable to hit his father, at least someone can. Mostly, though, it just makes him sad to see Dad flinch and cower, like he's a child himself. If Grandpa had never beaten Dad when he was growing up, then Dad might not beat Bucky and his sisters now, and he doesn't like to think on that too much.
His grandparents' farmhouse is much smaller than his family's brownstone in Brooklyn, and it looks like a strong wind could blow it down. Sometimes Bucky forgets that Dad didn't come from much of anything, that he distinguished himself in the war and worked his way through Harvard Law to provide his family with what they have. Visiting Shelbyville always reminds him of uncomfortable truths, and that's just one more reason to hate this place.
Bucky lies on the floor of the den, wrapped up in a nest of blankets and pillows with his sisters. Abbie's curled against his chest, drooling, her mouth open around the thumb she fell asleep sucking on (even though she's six now and he's really got to break her of that habit). Deb snores quietly, snuffles, and turns over without waking. Rebecca's perfectly still, lying on her side with her back to Bucky, but he can tell from her breathing that she's just as awake as he is.
"It's only three more days," he says quietly.
Rebecca doesn't answer for a few minutes, but then she asks, "Do you think we'll hurt our kids too?"
"I won't," Bucky says, voice firm with conviction, because he's never giving himself the chance. "I'm not having any."
"That's smart," Rebecca whispers. "Maybe I won't either."
So what if he never makes a family? Bucky doesn't care about settling down with a girl anyway.
He can't move easily, not with Abbie asleep on his chest, but Bucky reaches over and pats Rebecca's shoulder. She relaxes under his hand, and he hopes that his touch brings her some small comfort.
"It's not as bad as it looks," Steve says, but his busted mouth is so swollen that the words come out slurred.
The first thing Bucky did when he got home from Shelbyville was catch the train to Red Hook. He's been wired for the last twenty-four hours, unable to read or sleep in the car, so excited to see Steve again that he couldn't focus on anything else. Now he's here, standing in the middle of his friend's stuffy bedroom, but everything's all wrong.
Steve is a mess: both eyes blackened, lips split, nose broken, his left arm encased in a plaster cast. Sarah told Bucky that he's got three cracked ribs too, and that he lost one of his back teeth. Somebody beat the hell out of Steve, but he won't tell his ma who it was.
Bucky's so angry that he feels like his skin is on fire. When he gets his hands on whoever did this, they're going to wish they were dead.
He sits beside Steve and touches his shoulder, careful not to apply much pressure, in case he's injured there too.
"Look, I know you're proud, and no snitch besides, but you're gonna name names," Bucky says, and it's some kind of miracle that he's keeping his voice this even and calm.
Steve shakes his head, all mulish determination.
Even the worst whipping Bucky's ever had didn't leave him half this battered, and there's no way he's letting somebody get away with hurting Steve like this.
"How many were there?" he asks.
"Four," Steve says, and he's actually smiling, the crazy bastard. "Gotta admire their teamwork I guess."
"Not really," Bucky says. Only the worst sort of cowards gang up on a kid like that, four to one, so that narrows down the list of suspects.
"Was it the Fiscella brothers?" he asks. "I know Gino's been sore ever since you stopped him from bothering that German girl."
"Her name is Doris, and she was doing a pretty good job of protecting herself before I showed up," Steve says.
He dodged Bucky's question, but he can tell from Steve's body language that his first guess was off-base anyway.
"Seamus and his gang then?" Bucky asks.
Steve looks away and says, "Stop asking. I'm not telling you who it was."
That's answer enough, and Bucky springs off the bed, ready to hunt down Seamus and give him a dose of his own medicine. "That sorry sonofabitch," he says. "I swear to God, I'm gonna beat the Irish out of him."
"Bucky! Please don't. It'll just make everything worse." Steve might be giving him that puppy-dog look that usually melts his anger in an instant, but his face is too bruised for it to have its typical effect.
Bucky shakes his head and starts pacing. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't."
"I can give you two," Steve says fiercely. "First: I'm the one who's hurt, and I'm asking you not to. Second: Mrs. Rourke's got enough problems without you beating her son half to death."
Bucky cusses, because Steve isn't wrong about this. Half of Red Hook knows that Mr. Rourke drinks too much and knocks around all eight of his kids, like some kind of mick cliché come to life. He doesn't feel very sorry for Seamus, though, because Bucky's got a heavy-handed father too, and that doesn't give him the right to beat up seventy-pound asthmatics.
"Promise me that you'll leave Seamus alone," Steve says.
Bucky throws his hands in the air. "For Christ's sake, he coulda killed you—"
"Promise," Steve repeats, harder this time. "You won't harm one hair on his head. Got it?"
"Well aren't you just a fucking martyr?" Bucky asks, too furious to care how nasty he sounds. "Saint Rogers, taking beatings from bullies and turning the other cheek! I sure hope the self-righteousness feels good enough to make up for all the broken bones."
Steve glares at him. "That's not fair."
"I don't care about fairness!" Bucky shouts. I care about keeping you safe.
He doesn't like this feeling—an overwhelming need to stay close to Steve, to protect him regardless of cost or consequence. And he doesn't like what it's doing to him either. Making him angry, belligerent, and cruel.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—" Bucky runs his hands through his hair, so frustrated that he can't find the right words.
"It's all right," Steve says, and he doesn't sound upset anymore. "Just don't hurt Seamus, okay?"
Bucky nods. "Fine. I don't like it, but fine."
Steve frowns, disbelief showing plain on his face, even through all the bruising. "You swear?"
"Yeah," Bucky says. "I swear."
Steve's stuck in a cast for the rest of the summer, and he stays in bed most of the time because of his cracked ribs. Bucky can't stand seeing his friend so hurt, but he keeps his word, and he doesn't go looking for Seamus.
Steve manages to get back on his feet just before school starts, and he's more worried about how he looks than how he feels. He's far from vain, but his nose healed kind of crooked, and now he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, surveying the damage.
"I don't see what you're so worried about," Bucky says. "It doesn't look any different to me. Too big for your face, maybe, but you've always sort of favored a vulture."
Steve grins and asks, "A vulture? Really?"
"Hey, I get to make fun of anybody else's nose if I want to," Bucky says loftily. "Considering all the stupid Jew jokes that I've had to listen to over the years."
Thank God that none of his classmates know about his heritage. Because if Hal Thompson ever directs one of his ignorant comments about Jews at Bucky, he'll probably end up expelled from school.
Steve makes a sympathetic face. "Good point."
Bucky spends the last day of summer vacation at Rockaway Beach with his family and Steve. Rebecca hides under her umbrella like she's afraid sunlight will kill her, while Deb and Abbie build sandcastles too close to the sea. His parents go swimming, and they look so happy together, kissing and laughing as they tread water, that Bucky can almost pretend they're a normal married couple.
Steve doesn't know how to swim, so Bucky takes it upon himself to teach him. This proves disastrous, because Steve can't hold his breath for long, and his attempts to breaststroke and backstroke are downright sad. After about half an hour of this, they give up and wade back toward the shore.
"To be so light you sure are good at sinking," Bucky says.
Steve splashes him. "Maybe I've just got a bad teacher."
Bucky splashes back, and this soon devolves into wrestling. Playfully punching and tackling each other, rolling around right in the surf. Steve doesn't have half of Bucky's strength, but he's crafty and evasive, good at slipping out of headlocks and dodging friendly smacks. They end up sprawled side by side on the wet sand, laughing and breathless, talking shit to each other.
For a moment, it seems like the whole world is blue—bright sky and roiling ocean and Steve's smiling eyes—and Bucky has never felt more at peace.
Going back to school is a mixed blessing. Classes and football practice take up most of Bucky's time, keeping him out of his house and beyond Dad's reach, but he also sees so much less of Steve. He misses his best friend, and it irks him that Steve doesn't seem as bothered by their time apart as Bucky is. It's not personal, it's just that Steve is so damn independent, and he was used to doing things on his own long before Bucky came into his life. If loneliness ever bothers him, he doesn't let it show.
Bucky stays busy throughout the fall. He makes excellent grades in all of his subjects, and he's the top of his class in Latin, French, and chemistry. Very few of his pals from junior high attend his new school—mainly because the private tuition became too steep for a lot of families to afford—but Bucky makes new friends easily enough. He helps out Leonard Nell in English, eats lunch with Ulysses Roberts and Matthew Peterson (his pastor's only kid), and studies algebra with Sally Whitman. She's smart and quiet, better at math than everybody else in their class put together. Some of the boys dislike her for this, but Bucky thinks Sally is swell, and he never minds when she teaches him a better way to solve an equation.
Things start out a little rockier with his football team. It's rare for a freshman to make varsity, but Coach Polaski brags that Bucky's one of the best halfbacks he's ever seen, and he doesn't hesitate to start him. His teammates don't appreciate that, but Bucky doesn't let their resentment get to him. He's quick, agile, and sure-handed, every bit as skilled at his position as Coach says he is. He knows he's earned this spot, and by the end of the first game, everybody else knows it too. Before the season is over, his teammates don't even use his name anymore; instead, they affectionately call him "Seventeen," after his uniform number.
Steve always says he has a way of fitting in everywhere, and Rebecca's assessment is similar, if less flattering: she tells Bucky that he's like a chameleon, happy to change his colors to suit his surroundings. If he's honest with himself, Bucky figures that they're probably both onto something.
1931 was a good year for Dad's law firm, so Bucky receives even more Christmas presents than usual, including new clothes, a leather banded wrist watch, and Tarzan Triumphant (which he's been wanting to read for weeks). He isn't expecting anything else, so when his father pulls him aside after dinner and says, "I've got something for you," he's surprised.
Dad leads him into his study, walks to his desk, pulls a knife from the bottom drawer, and hands it to Bucky.
The handle is weighty, adorned with spiked knuckles, engraved with U.S. 1918. Bucky touches the points along the bows and imagines what it would feel like to punch someone with all that heavy bronze guarding your hand, a fist made of metal. When he unsheathes the blade, he sees that it's six or seven inches of blackened steel, deadly and beautiful. The dagger is almost as old as Bucky, but it's untarnished, sharp-edged and free of rust.
"This was my trench knife," Dad says. "It saved my life more than once."
Bucky wonders how many men died on the end of this blade. He's held weapons before, of course, but it's different, knowing that the tool in your hands has actually been used to kill.
"What's it like?" Bucky whispers. He can't quite find the nerve to ask the question in its entirety, but his father must know what he's getting at.
Dad is quiet for a long moment, expression vacant and detached. Then he says, "Killing is just like anything else you think you can't bear. Intolerable, until you get used to it."
Bucky knows a thing or two about that. He runs his thumb across the knife's handle, savoring how cool the bronze is, the uneven texture of the engraving.
"Thank you," Bucky says. He doesn't know why Dad decided to give this to him, and he isn't too sure of what it means. But this weapon helped to shape his father into a soldier, and that alone makes it a gift worth respecting.
The next night, at the Rogers's apartment, he shows the knife to Steve. It's late, but the moon is full, and its light shines through the window brightly, illuminating his father's present.
"Wow," Steve says. "That's really something."
Bucky pulls the blade free from its sheath, and an idea strikes him with such force that he shivers—a sudden need to make his feelings for Steve real, spelled out in blood and covenant.
He sits up and says, "Give me your hand."
Steve doesn't even hesitate. He sits up too, holds out his hand, and asks, "What, do you wanna make an oath or something?"
Bucky pricks the middle of his own palm. He feels the sting of the cut distantly, almost like it's happening to someone else, and watches his blood well up around the knifepoint. In the darkness, it looks black rather than red. Then he does the same to Steve, if more gently.
"Not an oath," Bucky says. "We're gonna make a neder. Ma told me about it once. It's like a pledge or a promise, but way more powerful. There's not really a good translation for it, because we don't have a word in English that means a vow with that kind of strength."
He takes Steve's bloody hand in his own. Clasps it so that their injuries line up, fitting their hurts together like puzzle pieces. "A neder is supposed to be unbreakable, so violating it is a really awful sin."
Steve squeezes Bucky's hand and says, "But I'm not Jewish, and you don't believe. Will it really mean much if we make a neder to God?"
"We're not making it to God," Bucky confesses. "We're making it to each other."
This is the most blasphemous thing he's ever said, and Bucky half-expects Steve—whose faith runs so deeply—to balk at the suggestion.
Instead, he nods and says, "I'm ready when you are."
Bucky thinks of the Book of Ruth and says, "Whither thou goest I will—"
He stops himself, because reciting the Bible word for word is less important than saying this the way he wants to. Bucky takes a deep breath and tries again: "Wherever you go I will go, and wherever you stay I will stay."
Steve grins; he knows these verses (of course he does). "Your people will be my people, and your God my God," he says softly.
"Where you die, I will die, and that's where I'll be buried," Bucky says. His hand is trembling now, but only because this is the truest promise he's ever made.
Steve's smile slips, and when he speaks again he sounds solemn. "Let the Lord answer to me if even death separates us."
That isn't at all how that line is supposed to go. Instead of an invitation for punishment, Steve made is sound like a threat against God. As if he plans to take on the Almighty Himself, should the Lord allow death to come between them.
Bucky can't remember anything else from Ruth, but he isn't finished. "I'll stay by your side through the good and the bad and everything in between," he says. "I'm with you no matter what."
Steve nods, and he grasps Bucky's hand more tightly. "I'm with you too," he swears. "Till the end of the line."
Blood slides down their wrists, irreversibly commingled.
Author's Notes: The quote at the beginning of this chapter is by Frank Herbert.
Sorry for the long gap between updates! Things in my personal life are getting more settled recently, so hopefully I'll be able to post more consistently from here on out.
