Archive of Our Own ^beta

“You’ll be a pallbearer, right?” Sharon says. Without waiting for Bucky to answer, she turns to Sam. “And you, too, of course.”

“Sure,” Sam says. Sharon doesn’t wait for Bucky to answer. 

#

As altar boys in Brooklyn, Bucky and Steve carried the cross on a few Good Fridays. It was a huge, heavy piece of wood. Bucky worried constantly that Steve would collapse under its weight. Bucky used to shoulder more than his share, even when Steve got pissed at him for it. That was Bucky’s job: take care of Steve. It was the only job he was ever good at. 

#

The obit runs on the front page of the Sunday Times. Bucky’s stunned by how much of his contributions Sharon used in compiling it. Sure, she’d let him ramble for a couple hours about the scrawny, scrappy, sharp-eyed artist he grew up with, but Bucky hadn’t expect her to include a scan of Steve’s self-portrait from art school or to mention all the time Bucky and Steve had spent together at the St. George. 

“I think she copy-pasted everything I emailed her,” Sam says over Bucky’s shoulder. He’s got one arm draped across the back of Bucky’s chair. 

“Yeah, she uh, she sure….” Bucky’s voice trails off. He’s gotten to the “survived by” portion. The first words hit him in the gut: 

Survived by his former partner, James ‘Bucky’ Barnes. 

Sam squeezes his shoulder. Bucky quickly turns the page. 

#

Bucky and Steve didn’t run an obit for either of their moms. They didn’t have the money. Steve wrote a letter and mailed it to Sligo in case one of his uncles was still alive, but he never heard back. 

Steve shrugged when Bucky asked if it bothered him. “She only really liked one of her brothers, and he’s dead. The one she let me name myself after.” 

Bucky’s uncle was alive and presumably kinder than any of Steve’s living relatives. When Bucky’s mom died, his dad shipped Becca off to live in Indiana with their mom’s brother. Becca never had a bad thing to say about him in her sporadic letters back to Bucky. Bucky suspects she only mentioned their uncle’s very close bachelor friend to him, though, not to their dad. He’ll never know for sure. Becca died a year and a half before Steve knocked Hydra clear out of his head. 

#

Bucky hears Sam’s phone make the FaceTime sound and follows it out to the living room. Sam’s sister always wants to talk to Bucky when she FaceTimes Sam. Sam gets irritable about it, like he think’s Bucky’s interested in her. But Bucky knows she’s keeping an eye on him instead, making sure he’s treating Sam right. Steve’s ma used to do the same thing to Bucky, even when he was too young and stupid to understand why Steve made him float inside. 

“--still have time to fly up,” Sarah’s saying. 

“No, don’t, really,” Sam says. “It’s too close, that ticket’ll be way too expensive.”

“Come on. I remember how hard Riley’s funeral was on you.”

Bucky pauses in the living room doorway. Riley. Sam’s….Bucky tries not to project, especially when he doesn’t know all the details, but he recognizes lost love when he sees it. Riley might not have been the Steve to Sam’s Bucky, exactly, but Bucky thinks the analogy might be pretty close. 

Sam looks up. He holds Bucky’s gaze steadily - always has, always does, no matter how bloody and feral Bucky might be. Right now, Bucky’s fresh out of the shower, wearing sweatpants and one of Sam’s pararescue sweatshirts because he wasn’t paying attention when he grabbed clean clothes out of the dryer. Sam looks him over. Bucky concentrates very hard on not blushing. 

“Is Bucky there?” Sarah asks. 

“Yeah.” Bucky drops onto the couch by Sam. He kicks his feet up onto Sam’s lap just so Sam will shove them away. “Hey, Sarah.”

Sarah’s quiet, studying him. “Okay,” she says finally. “I won’t fly up. But you are getting a shit-ton of flowers.”

#

The first time Bucky bought Steve flowers, he lied and said they were so he could practice painting still lifes. The second time he gave Steve flowers, he claimed it was a get-well present for Steve, who was fighting off pneumonia for the second time in a year. 

The third time Bucky brought Steve flowers, Steve pressed a kiss to the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “I’m not a girl,” he said, not with any venom but just like he wanted to make sure Bucky remembered. 

“You wanna know something?” Bucky said softly. He fitted his hand around Steve’s sharp hip. “I wouldn’ta got you flowers if you were.” 

#

“Do you think Sharon gets it?” Bucky asks. He’s halfway through a case of beer and still not feeling a damn thing. Sam’s a couple bottles in and tipsy in a warm kind of way that makes him melt into the couch next to Bucky. They’re presumably watching baseball, but Bucky doesn’t know who’s playing or what inning they’re in. Steve was the sports guy. 

“Gets what?”

“About us.” Bucky’s face heats up. “I mean - “ 

“No, no, wait, is there an 'us' I should know about?” Sam’s grinning like he’s teasing, but there’s something sharp in his eyes.

“No. Shut up.” It’s the loudest, most obviously fake lie Bucky’s ever told. “About me and Steve being a couple of queers.” 

“She put ‘partner’ in the New York Times. I think everybody knows.”

“Former partners,” Bucky points out. “That could mean anything. Everyone already assumes I was his sidekick.” 

“You weren’t?”

“I’ll sidekick you off this couch.” Bucky aims a kick at Sam and purposely misses as Sam scoots out of the way, laughing. “I don’t want them to get the wrong idea.”

Sam’s smile fades. “Is the wrong idea that y’all were gay?”

“ No. The wrong idea would be that we weren’t. ” Now, Steve being trans - that’s not common knowledge, and Bucky swore to take it to his grave. Sam knows, a side effect of having slept with Steve too. He’s not telling anyone either - Sam might be the most high-profile trans hero, but he respects Steve's wishes about not wanting people to know. 

"He didn’t start out ashamed of being gay,” Bucky says fiercely. "He didn’t start out ashamed of me.”

“Or me,” Sam says quietly. He carefully touches Bucky’s metal hand. Bucky’s glad they’re united in this. He wishes they’d met some other way so maybe neither of them would be haunted by Steve and Sam would really know Bucky’s interested in him for who he is. 

But at least Bucky has one other person in this world who knew the real Steve Rogers. 

#

“I’m still me,” Steve promised Bucky after Azzano. “Just taller. I don’t plan on changing on the inside.”

And he didn’t for seventy years, until Bucky evaporated for five years and whoever Steve used to be evaporated too. 

#

“It’ll be a closed casket,” Sharon says. “He was pretty skinny there at the end.”

Bucky shrugs. “I’ve seen him skinny before.”

“But the world hasn’t. Not like this.”

“Hey,” Sam says before Bucky can say anything else. “You don’t have to answer this. I get that it might be invasive. But - does it ever freak you out?” Sam scratches his head. “The timelines. The different Steves. I mean, I understand he was the same Steve, but the parallel lives. I only ask because to be honest sometimes it makes me uncomfortable, and I was wondering if you’ve figured out a good way to address those feelings. I figured if anyone knew, it would be you.”

“Yeah, I understand. It’s a lot to consider,” Sharon admits. Bucky remembers her kissing Steve in Germany and bites his tongue. “The best way I’ve discovered to manage how I feel about it is to acknowledge that the snap changed all of us. You know? For some people, it sharpened priorities. For some people, it exacerbated weaknesses.” 

“Which one was Steve?” Bucky asks. 

Sharon sighs. Hesitates. Sighs again. “I have to go help set up for the visitation. I’ll see you both at the church tomorrow morning. 9 AM?”

“Sure,” Sam says. Bucky’s got his hands in his pockets. Sam taps his elbow to get him to leave. 

#

Bucky’s mom never went to church. She spoke Yiddish at home. But she sent both of her kids to Mass with the Rogers family on Sundays. When Bucky was old enough for school, she enrolled him at St. Francis at his insistence. He wanted to be with Steve. In the Army, his dog tags said Catholic. When Bucky lay dying at the foot of the Alps, he begged the Virgin Mary to intercede for Steve. 

Bucky doesn’t believe in God anymore. He’s not certain even Steve did there at the end. 

#

“Should I wear my dress uniform?” Sam asks first thing the morning of the funeral. 

Bucky fiddles with the coffee pot. It’s an old metal beast of a machine that mostly burns coffee. It tastes like before to Bucky. He doesn’t know what it tastes like to Sam, but he never turns down a cup. “When was the last time you wore it?”

Sam’s quiet for so long that Bucky almost thinks he’s fallen asleep on his feet. “Riley’s funeral.”

Bucky finally convinces the coffee machine to roar to life. “Wear a suit,” he says. He squeezes Sam’s shoulder, then uses that grip to push him out of the way so he can get mugs down from the top cabinet. “If we’re both pallbearers, we need to match.” 

#

Bucky looks good in a suit. He knows it. But he’s always preferred a dress. 

“You’re gonna get arrested,” Steve said dubiously the first time Bucky wore a dress out to the St. George. 

“Nah,” Bucky said, twirling so the blue skirt fluffed out. “I’ll be on your arm. Ain’t no rule against a lady going out with her man.” 

“I guess not,” Steve said, but he was smiling. 

#

Sam looks so good in his suit that Bucky immediately has to look away. He shouldn’t be ogling Sam directly before a funeral - but who cares? Bucky thinks suddenly, almost viciously. Steve’s death didn’t end his relationship with either of them. He left both of them long before that. Neither Bucky nor Sam is being disloyal by feeling something. 

“Your tie looks stupid,” Bucky says just to see the outraged look on Sam’s face. He steps into Sam’s space and starts fiddling with his tie, which in fact already looks perfect. 

“You look stupid,” Sam says. He messes with Bucky’s neat tie. 

They both are a little ridiculous, Bucky thinks. Two guys so desperate to touch each other they’re fooling with their already-straight ties. Why don’t they just touch each other, no excuses? 

Sam’s phone chimes. “8:30 already?” he says, hands stilling. 

“Let’s go,” Bucky says. He reluctantly pulls away. "Can’t be late.” 

#

Steve and Bucky were almost late to carry the cross the final time they served on Good Friday. They slid into line just in time. Steve’s hair was all fluffy from yanking the alb over his head. Bucky spit in his palm and smoothed his bangs flat. 

“You’d better let me carry it this time,” Steve hissed. The priest glared at him. 

“Sure thing,” Bucky whispered back. He took as much weight as he possibly could. 

#

Caskets didn’t have handles when Bucky and Steve’s moms died. It feels strange to Bucky to lift Steve’s casket from the side instead of carrying it on his shoulder. The handle forces Bucky to share the weight with Sam. As the organ starts playing, Sam makes eye contact with him over the top of the casket. He tilts his head a little to the side: you ready? Bucky nods. 

They lift Steve together. 

Bucky’s always known Steve would die first. But carrying Steve’s body still feels unreal. Distant. 

Sometimes, Bucky goes into a fugue state. It usually scares him - it reminds him of being programmed. But today he welcomes it. He drifts through the funeral Mass with Sam by his side. He doesn’t take communion. He doesn’t believe in it or deserve it. 

Bucky comes back to himself when it’s time to carry the casket outside. There’s already a grave dug in the churchyard by Peggy Carter’s headstone. Steve promised his ma he’d be buried by her. Bucky heard it. But that churchyard’s been paved over sometime since 1944. Bucky doesn’t know if Steve’s ma was moved first or not. If his own mom was left behind. 

Bucky, Sam, and the other pallbearers carefully set down the casket. Bucky can picture his mom’s grave, one row back from Steve’s ma and dad. He might not have been buried beside Steve, but he would have been close. He used to think being close to Steve was all he needed. 

Dirt rains down on Steve’s casket. 

Next to Bucky, Sam makes a small sound. When Bucky looks over, tears are streaking down Sam’s face. “Hey,” Bucky says quietly enough that only Sam can hear him. Sam shudders. 

Bucky’s throat closes up. 

In the back of his mind, Bucky knows there are photographers watching, news media, paparazzi, anyone else Sharon didn’t quite manage to chase off. His splotchy face might end up in the society page. So be it. Crying at a funeral isn’t shameful, and anyone who wants to tell Bucky otherwise can choke. Between sobs, Bucky can hear Sam’s own ragged breaths. 

After a while, people start filtering back into the church, probably to the attached events hall for the catered meal Sharon spent hours and hours finalizing. Bucky could go in and socialize, probably; as blended as his brain was for seventy years, he’s never truly lost his charm. He doesn’t particularly want to keep standing over Steve’s fresh grave. 

But Sam’s not moving yet. He’s not crying anymore, but he doesn’t look fully settled. Bucky’s familiar with that raw feeling, where one wrong word might set off another round of tears. The throngs of people are gone. The photographers have followed the mourners inside. Bucky slips his hand into Sam’s and squeezes. 

“I’m gonna say something,” Sam says quietly. “And I’m going to mean it, and I need you to promise me you’re not gonna immediately try to play it off with a joke.” 

“When have I ever done that?”

“Barnes, don’t test me.” 

“Okay, okay. I promise. What?”

Sam clears his throat. He squeezes Bucky’s hand. “I think we’re both feeling a little raw right now. Stuff’s kind of close. But I don’t think I’m wrong for thinking there’s something here, right?” 

Bucky’s stomach flutters. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Good.” Sam’s thumb strokes over Bucky’s knuckles. It’s more tenderness than Bucky’s had in a long time - more tenderness then either he or Sam usually shows, to be honest. It makes him blink hard. “I don’t think we need to be making any big moves right now. We’ve got work to do, shit to settle.” 

“You’ve gotta start using that shield.”

“Oh.” Sam’s voice goes flat. When he speaks again, he’s hesitant. “I was thinking more about working out things in our personal lives, settling shit with ourselves.” 

Bucky shrugs. “Why not both?” 

“Yeah." Sam rubs Bucky's knuckles some more. "We both deserve something good."

"Hell yeah we do."

They’re both quiet for a minute, staring down at the grave. Bucky keeps himself from worrying about Sam by focusing on his warm hand. If he does this right, if he works his ass off - hell, maybe he’ll try therapy, just this once - 

It’s weird to have the future in his hand again. Bucky’s a little scared of it. But all he knows how to do is move forward.