Three hours after leaving Bucky to play the organ, Steve returns to the church. There is no more music and he fights the sadness that wakes up in him when he realizes that Bucky must have left without telling him. He bows his head towards the altar and heads to the balcony to make sure the lights are off and the organ is closed. When he arrives he is greeted by an unusual sight – Bucky is sleeping by the organ.
Steve quietly approaches Bucky and takes his time looking at him. He looks so peaceful asleep like that. There's no trace of that tired scowl that has marred his face lately. Sleeping like this he looks so much like the Bucky of their youth. The Bucky from before everything that had happened to him. For a second Steve the pain that ripped his heart apart when he decided to leave that life and become a priest.
Steve gets on one knee next to Bucky and without thinking reaches out to move the lock of hair that had slipped across Bucky's face. At that first touch Bucky wakes up startled and it takes him a moment or two to realize where he is.
"Sorry." "Sorry." They both apologize at the same time and then start laughing quietly. Bucky smiles a big smile when Steve continues speaking, "So, I see you're sleeping again."
Bucky rubs his eyes and yawns. Seeing Bucky like causes Steve to remember his old self. He remembers all those other times when he would see Bucky waking from a sleep like that. All those times when he and Bucky would fall asleep next to each other on a couch while watching a movie or on the floor of Bucky's room after one of their marathon conversations. He remembers all those times when they shared secrets with each other, all those times when they comforted each other.
"Hey! Steve, are you ok?"
Bucky's voice brings Steve back to the moment and he shakes his head to clear his mind. "Yea, umm, I'm ok, sorry."
"Where did you go to? You were miles away."
"Oh, nowhere, nowhere. So, a good sleep? Floor wasn't too uncomfortable?"
"Uh, the best sleep I've had these last 10 days. And no, floor was not too uncomfortable. It's not like this was my first time sleeping on the floor, right?"
"Umm, yes, not the first time." Steve fights the memories from returning. He gets up and starts looking around the organ searching for the power switch.
Bucky rushes after Steve. "I'll take care of that, it's the least I can do."
"Oh, ok, I'll go back to work then. You keep the key and make use of it, please. I don't want you to suffer, just try not to fall asleep again."
"I'll do my best, and thank you once again, Steve."
"No need to thank me, Bucky… you never need to thank me." Steve says that and returns to his office leaving a slightly confused Bucky by the organ.
Bucky returns to the church to play the organ almost every day for the next week, he only skips Saturday, Steve presumes it's to avoid all the people that are there on Saturdays preparing for the Sunday service. Steve in turn returns to his sketchbook every day while Bucky's playing.
One day Steve is haunted memories from his past and he decides to leaf through his old sketchbooks. He gets one of his first sketchbooks. The drawings he finds there reflect his life before the seminary: full page drawings of his old apartment, school football game, his parents, his friends; and every now and then a detail of a body: a hand here, a jaw line there, an eyebrow and an unfinished eye… And all of those details familiar as if they were of his own body… all of them Bucky.
Bucky: his best friend, his confessor, his protector countless times when he was too weak to defend himself, and the only person he desperately wanted to protect and had failed to when it most mattered.
Steve is disgusted by the memories of his past failures and he closes the sketchbook and hides it in his desk drawer. He returns to the shelf and takes a sketch book he started during his last year at the seminary. The drawings in this one calm him down a bit, make him focus back to being the person he is today and not the one he was before the seminary. He looks at the drawings of the scenes from the Bible and he is back in control. As he turns the pages the elements of his ordination appear: the chalice from his first mass, the rosary he received from his mentor, the long black cassock.
Seeing the drawing of the cassock makes Steve run his fingers over his chest, over the buttons that travel the length of the cassock – those 33 little knots that somehow serve to remind him to keep himself hidden, locked away. This is his uniform, his armour.
As he approaches the last pages of the sketchbook his arrival to the parish is marked by drawings of the altars and the statues from the church. Again there are scenes from the Bible, but there is one more thing that he notices in those drawings for the first time – he sees Bucky. He sees elements of Bucky on almost every page. The saints have Bucky's nose, the honourable women from the Old Testament have Bucky's cheek bones and eyes, the women from the New Testament have Bucky's full lips.
Anger rises up in Steve and he throws the sketchbook across the room. He has spent the last nine years trying to get Bucky out of his head and out of his heart but this simple thing shows him all his efforts were in vain. He sees now that he can try his hardest to forget all the things they went through, to forget the old dreams, the old conversations, but Bucky will always be in everything he does.
Then the realization hits him: Bucky has always been and will continue to be a part of him, for as long as he lives.
Over the week Steve tries to go back to his parish work. He hears confession from some of his regular parishioners, he works on his Sunday sermon, he prepares the discussion topic for the next youth group meeting… And while he works on those things he tries not to think about Bucky. He tries not to think of Bucky sleeping on the floor, his lips slightly parted in sleep, his hair over his face, the shirtsleeve rolled up revealing an intricate tattoo design on his left arm. He tries but he fails. His failure made more obvious by the fact that in the middle of his sermon outline there is a sketch of the Bucky's tattoo design.
For a moment he traces the lines on the paper and allows himself to imagine tracing the design on the original canvas. Then he curses silently and rips up the paper. Abandoning all the work until tomorrow he leaves his office and heads to his bedroom.
He skips dinner in hopes that an empty stomach will distract him from his memories but they come all the same. He starts praying the rosary to calm himself and to chase away the images that threaten to appear. When that too fails he realizes he needs to let off some steam, he needs to run, so he takes his cassock and trousers off and changes into a hoodie, tracksuit bottoms and running shoes. Once he is out of the parish building he puts the hood up and starts running.
The night is cold like it usually is in the middle of December. As he runs he can feel the cold bite at his face and his hands and he relishes the pain. The pace he set himself is guaranteed to exhaust him and he pushes himself faster, harder. Throughout the run Steve repeats the words of the Act of Contrition in his head.
The repetition of the prayer, the rhythm of the running and the pain spreading all over his body succeed in distracting Steve from the thoughts that had tortured him the entire evening. When he reaches the park he stops for a breath and as soon as he stops the thoughts are back and this time with a vengeance.
He remembers vividly the nights he used to spend at Bucky's, the nights they would lie on the floor of Bucky's room, sharing one pillow, their heads touching. He remembers their conversations about their future. He remembers waking up the following morning, his arms around Bucky and Bucky's around him. He remembers how in sleep they had reached out for each other not wanting to separate for a moment. He remembers counting minutes until Bucky wakes up and wishing he could hold him like that for the rest of his life. He remembers moving away from Bucky when he'd sense him waking up for fear of rejection.
The pain the running and the cold had caused him is nothing compared to the pain those memories inflict on him. He collapses on the path, his knees hitting the gravel hard and he screams into the night, "NO! Stop it! I can't take it anymore! Not again!" He puts his head in his hands and he can feel the tears coming.
"Father Steve?" a quiet voice startles Steve.
Steve looks up towards the park bench a few meters ahead of him and tries to see who it is although the voice is unmistakeable, "Bucky?"
Some have asked me when these two are finally going to "do it".
Well, obviously not in this chapter, sorry, but very soon, I promise. In the next chapter or the one after that! and those chapters will arrive before the weekend hopefully.
Thank you all for readying and if you have time I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of this.