Archive of Our Own

Every demon has their vices.

They smoke, they drink, they seduce. They whisper thoughts of war and murder and theft and bribery, of greed and lust and pure jealousy into the ears of humans, hoping one might catch, pleased as punch when they ensnare someone else. They roam the Earth looking for souls to drag down with them.

The humans have it easier, they say, thinking back on their fall from Heaven with hatred and a thirst for revenge, given we fell much further.  

The first time Bucky laid his beady yellow snake eyes on Sam, however, he knew none of the other demons’ vices held a candle to his own.

He fell in love with an angel, after all.

The first time Bucky visited Earth, he was a simple snake.

He wasn’t called Bucky yet, of course. He wasn’t exactly sure he’d had a name back then, if he was being entirely honest, and if he had, it had been lost to time along with the rest of humanity’s forgotten languages. In later tellings of his first misadventure, some even began to claim he was Satan himself, had whispered temptation into Eve’s ear, had taken the Almighty’s most beloved creation away from his side.

He was always just Bucky, though, a run-of-the-mill demon sent up to Earth to spy on the humans, to direct them towards their wants and desires, whatever those might have been.

He’d never thought knowledge should be such a sin, anyway.

And so, he was cast out of the garden along with his temptees, had slinked his way out of paradise into the cruel reality of Earth, a little too reminiscent of his original fall from grace. 

The shame and worry and fear from the Almighty’s newly unfavored humans washed over him like a hurricane, and Bucky reminded himself that he was not there to care, only to spy and to tempt. Their anguish was not his problem, was actually likely to his benefit: it would cause anger and resentment towards the Almighty himself to build in his precious humans. 

Their cries as they were marched out of the garden felt like shards of glass in his scales nevertheless.

He slithered out ahead of them both, tried to put distance between himself and their overwhelming sadness, between himself and an angry Almighty. He was stopped in his tracks, though, by the angel that guarded the gates.

He’d taken on a form reminiscent of humans, this angel, an average height and weight, a bit of hair on his head and a bit more on his chin, brown eyes impossibly deep, dark skin gorgeous and striking. The wings on his back, however, had set him apart, easily four times as wide as the man— Adam, Eve had called him—was tall, their color plain, a dusty roan, beautifully elegant in their easy simplicity. 

He held a sword lit aflame, crossed against another in front of the gates, a barrier to ensure the humans would never find their way back into paradise, but, unlike his fellow guard, his expression wasn’t one of steel, of the righteous anger commanded by the Almighty. 

He looked terribly, horribly, horrifically sad.

Tears fell from his eyes unbidden and mostly unnoticed, his body as rigid and stoic as the Almighty had commanded it to be even as grief ravaged his expression. The hand not holding his fiery saber twitched at his sides as the couple passed near, as if it longed to reach out to touch, to provide some amount of comfort, or even to drag them back to Eden where they belonged.

But his hand stayed at his side, and the angel’s eyes only grew more and more distraught as he watched the couple wander off into the desert, wholly unprepared for the world ahead of them, cursed with the lifelong pain of labor for the fleetingly sweet taste of knowledge.

“Surely one mistake mustn’t condemn them forever!” Bucky heard the angel cry out, his face cast upon the sky, unaware of his fellow angel’s look of ire. “Are they not deserving of Your mercy?”

Bucky didn’t hear the Almighty’s answer, but the look he saw on the angel’s face was enough to know.

He decided that day that he’d treat the angel better than the Almighty ever could.

The next time he saw the angel, he was watching over the children of the couple he’d been forced to evict.

“I had wept for their parents, you know,” the angel said when Bucky walked up beside him, taking on a near-human form of his own. “Cried when they were cast from paradise, when they were punished with lives of toiling rather than bliss and prosperity.”

“I know,” Bucky replied, perhaps as reverent as a demon ever could be. “I was there.”

The angel looked at him then, gaze searching, roaming over Bucky’s entire body before he focused in on his eyes. “You were the snake,” surprisingly said without judgment or anger, without reproach, without blame.

Interesting, Bucky thought for the first time, but nowhere near the last. “I was. I suppose I still am.”

“I’m Samuel,” the angel continued, as if Bucky hadn’t played a role in his earlier upset. “Do you have a name? Something I can call you that isn’t just ‘the snake’?”

Bucky considered for half a heartbeat, but shook his head. “None that matters now.” He waited for the angel to keep going, perhaps to explain his presence with the humans he’d been tasked with keeping out of the garden. Samuel, having sensed Bucky wasn’t keen to keep speaking, took his probably less than satisfying answer with the kind of grace only an angel can have, and turned back to the children. 

“He asked me to watch over them, said their banishment was all part of His Divine Plan. Perhaps the joy of the children might be worth the misery of losing the garden.” His voice had the barest note of desperation, fainter than the smell of long-picked roses still sitting out on a kitchen table, but Bucky heard it. 

Bucky always heard it. 

He filed it away for later, not wanting to make the angel more upset than he already was. 

“The children seem lovely,” was what he said instead.

At that first open opportunity, Samuel launched into delighted rambling about them both. “Cain is the elder of the two. He’s strong and growing well, will probably follow in his father’s footsteps in working the land, might even have better luck. Abel, the younger one, is the sweetest a boy his age could be. He’s happy and curious, a bleeding heart. He has a way with animals his brother does not possess, just as Cain has a way with the land that Abel lacks. They are both hard workers, good boys, even at their young ages, and I’ve loved watching them grow.

“And the way they play! They have not yet lost their youthfulness, the hope has not left their eyes the way it has their father’s. They often wrestle good naturedly together, and though Cain always wins, their parents clap for them both. I already mourn for the days when their youth fades, as Cain’s is beginning to do, but then I suppose I’ll get to watch over their own children then.”

Bucky tilted his head, admired the sharp lines of Samuel’s face, somehow still soft despite being so sculpted. “And is that what you want to do? To watch over these humans as each of them grow old and leave behind the next generation?”

Samuel spared one last glance for the children before he looked over to Bucky and shrugged his shoulders, wings clutched tightly at his back. “I don’t have wants,” he said, posture solid but voice slightly wavering. “I’m an angel.”

Bucky wondered if trying to tempt an angel was going too far, wondered if there was even anything in angels to tempt.

Wondered if maybe there was just something to tempt in this one.

Bucky grabbed onto his tail and twirled it around his fingers, the way he often had when he pulled a human towards their sinful desires, but he took one look at the angel and thought better of it. Samuel deserved better than the manipulative tactics Bucky used on everyone else. “So what will you do if the Divine Plan says you have to go elsewhere?”

Samuel pointedly didn’t look at the children, but he reflexively took in a sharp breath. It was a decidedly human expression of feeling, especially for an angel with no need to breathe. “I will go,” he said, and it sounded like a death sentence.

Bucky stopped the conversation there, and Samuel took the chance to turn back to the children. They spent the rest of their time together that day commenting on their play and their habits, Bucky intermittently looking over to sneak a peek at Sam’s soft smile.

He was pretty sure he’d burn the whole world down to see Samuel smile that widely if he wasn’t also sure that would just break his heart instead.

When they parted a few hours later, the children having gone to sleep, Bucky felt like he’d seen a part of Samuel it’s possible no one else ever had, the Almighty included. 

He’d seen the part that cared for humanity above all else.

Bucky craved more of Samuel, of his sharp wit and caring nature and loving disposition. He wanted more of his commentary on the boys, on humanity, on his job, even when that commentary veered into what was perhaps uncouth, given his heavenly origins.

Especially when his commentary veered into the uncouth.

He came back at least weekly for the next decade, watching with Samuel as the boys turned into men of their own, Cain a farmer and Abel a shepherd, as Samuel grew fonder and fonder of them both with each passing day.

He watched as the Almighty embraced Abel’s sacrifice and turned his metaphorical nose up at Cain’s, watched as He dismissed Cain’s feelings of jealousy and inadequacy while lifting up his brother. 

He held Samuel’s hand when Cain killed Abel over it, had let him sob into his shoulder even though each tear stung, the water as holy as if a priest himself had blessed them.

When Cain was banished and sent away for his actions, Bucky kept his grip on Samuel’s hand, walking in step as they both continued on behind him, watching as Cain met his wife, had a family, built his city.

Bucky didn’t think he’d ever get used to the blinding brightness of all that Samuel was when Cain’s wife bore Enoch, when he saw every new child thereafter.

As the years went on, their visits became less frequent. Bucky still saw Samuel often, at least twice a revolution, but their weekly visits tapered off as the world grew, as they both got saddled with more responsibility. 

His angel no longer had only one family line to watch over, no longer could pass the days watching only a few children grow up.

And more people meant Bucky was expected to perform more mischief.

His mischief was mostly harmless, never anything with as far reaching consequences as the Apple had had. He convinced humans to skimp out on each other during trades, skim a few pieces off the top of their deals. He’d cause more annoyances here and there, more slight feuds between households, nothing life-ruining.  

His fellow demons had more nefarious plans.

As the human population grew, so did the nephilim. Demons were seducing humans left and right, and the humans were bearing their children, large and strong and just distinct enough from their fully human kin to be noticed. 

Samuel seemed more and more worried with each infrequent visit, looking nervously skyward each time a nephilim passed them by. Bucky didn’t ask, figured Samuel knew that he had an open ear whenever he felt he required it, and, a few worried looks aside, they passed their visits much the same as they always had: joking with one another and reminiscing on old stories, repeating new jokes and tales they’d both heard from the humans in their travels.

When their semi-annual meeting coincided with Samuel overseeing the building of a mostly-finished boat, Bucky finally pressed.

“He is unhappy,” Samuel gritted out, watching with uncharacteristic nervousness as the man called Noah assembled his ark. It was subtle, likely unnoticeable to anyone else even if they could see Samuel, but Bucky saw as his hands fidgeted, as his wings lightly fluttered from where they usually stayed tightly pressed against his back. His lip trembled, and red rimmed around his eyes. “There are too many nephilim.”

“Nephilim are not included in the Divine Plan,” Bucky guessed, hoping it didn’t come off as sarcastic as it may have seemed. He rarely agreed with the Almighty on the best of days, even less so when his actions caused Samuel direct upset, but he knew Samuel believed in the Plan, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with it.

“Humanity was supposed to be untouched by the divine, even if the divine had fallen.”

“Can a species made by the divine ever be untouched by it?” Bucky asked, but Samuel did not answer, just looked at him with his eyes full of sorrow, heaving a sigh deep enough that told Bucky all he needed to know. “You already asked the Almighty that very question, didn’t you?”

Samuel gave him a wry look, at odds with the hint of tears in his eyes. “He didn’t take it well.”

Bucky nodded towards the boat. “So what does the ark have to do with it?”

“Apparently Noah’s line is still untouched,” Samuel replied, a hard line of anger Bucky didn’t know angels could feel set across his brow, fiery righteousness in his eyes more correct, more deserving than the Almighty’s could have ever been. “He told him to build a boat.”

It dawned on Bucky then, exactly why Samuel held such a grim mixture of anger and sadness. “He’s going to flood them all.”

“Just the ones in this part of the world,” Samuel replied, but it didn’t sound like it brought him any comfort, or anything at all, really, other than more anger. “Apparently it’s an epidemic here.”

“What are you going to do?” Bucky asked, hoping it was the right thing to say.

Sam sighed, and Bucky thought it probably wasn’t. “What can I do? A single angel’s voice against His does little, and none of the others seem to care. I’ll keep watch over Noah and his family as I’m supposed to, but mostly I’ll do my best to make sure the others do well in what time they have left.”

For the first time perhaps since he’d fallen, Bucky spent the next year doing actually good deeds.

He convinced some to leave, to go on journeys he wasn’t sure would actually save them in hopes that they might. Samuel helped him, even if he didn’t do any of the tempting himself. He made it easier for them to go, supplying them with small, under the radar miracles giving them resources or opportunities they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The rest of them they took care of as best they could, giving them happiness they might not have found on their own, and Bucky savored each new smile, for more reasons than just Samuel’s own matching expression. He started to see in them what he thought Samuel might have all along.

It was a sad day when the rains finally came.

They watched together, did what they could to alleviate suffering when they saw the opportunity. Eventually, the rain grew too heavy for anyone to bear, and so they sat huddled, far above the ground, as the ark swept through the new sea, alone in this part of the world.

Samuel raised his fully extended wing above his head, flattening it as a deterrent against the rain.

Bucky pressed himself to Samuel’s side, and wished they could have kept everyone else dry, too.

There was an ebb and flow in their relationship Bucky caught onto very early on.

They’d go months, years, even decades without seeing each other, both of them busy with whatever their respective sides had assigned them to do. Bucky continued causing mostly harmless mischief, convincing humans to partake in the sins he didn’t think should be sins anyway, and Samuel kept an eye on whatever the Almighty assigned him to, doing his best to spread his own agenda of kindness and mercy when he could on the side, even if it wasn’t necessarily strictly written in the Plan.

Bucky thought Samuel did a lot of things the Almighty wouldn’t have cared for if He’d bothered to look.

In between their long absences, though, were days, weeks, months of the only thing Bucky might have ever truly called bliss.

Samuel never called for him, per se, but every now and again he’d drop hints Bucky could find no matter where in the world he was, and he’d come running like the lovesick hellhound he was. Sometimes, even when Samuel didn’t drop the hints, Bucky found himself missing his angel so dearly he sought him out anyway, oftentimes getting him out of trouble.

“Is recklessness considered a heavenly trait, or am I just fortunate enough to be well acquainted with the one angel hellbent on getting himself killed?” Bucky asked after having pulled Samuel out of a burning library.

“It wouldn’t have killed me!” Samuel protested, holding an armful of scrolls and parchment, the last relics of the greatest library the world might ever know. “At least, I don’t think it could kill me. And angels can’t be ‘hellbent’ on anything anyway. Kind of the exact opposite of what we are.”

“Forgive me if I wasn’t too keen to find out if it would or wouldn’t, angel,” Bucky said, getting up to dust himself off, and pulling Samuel up with him. “Plenty of other beings with wings cook quite nicely over a fire, and I really didn’t want to find out if you were or weren’t the exception.”

Bucky took a few of Samuel’s scrolls out of his hands, lightening his load as he was wont to do any time they were together. “And every other angel can’t be hellbent, sure, but you’ve never been quite like everyone else.”

Samuel clutched the rest of his scrolls tighter to his chest. “I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not.”

“It’s my favorite thing about you, angel.”

They passed the centuries like that, meeting up here or there after long stretches of time without seeing each other. They attended festivals, watched countless lectures, and danced multiple nights away to music from every corner of humanity, always invisible to everyone but each other.

Bucky watched as Samuel performed miracle after miracle, even more dedicated to bringing happiness, prosperity, and peace to the humans he watched over.

The Divine Plan, on the other hand, just got more and more violent, a scourge of war and famine and disease.

From the bits of the arguments that Samuel had let slip, Bucky pieced together the Almighty wasn’t exactly pleased with his favorite angel, but Samuel kept going anyway. 

“My purpose was always to look after and care for humanity,” Samuel said to him one night after performing a miracle. The receiver was a man who had fallen out of the Almighty’s favor after his pride had gotten the best of him, but Samuel, of course, didn’t find him undeserving of mercy. 

Bucky was pretty sure there was a bit too much wine flowing through his angel’s divine veins. “That was always my part in the Divine Plan. If caring for humanity eventually got thrown out of the Divine Plan, I’m still here. I’m still gonna do my job. I’m still gonna look after them.”

Bucky took in all of Samuel, stern determination to continue his purpose warring on his face with the delight at watching the humans he cared for rejoice, and asked a question they’d both been too worried to think about before. “What if He makes you stop?”

Samuel just looked back over at Bucky, deep brown eyes meeting yellow, and took another sip from his skein.

Around the sixteenth century, they both found out.

Bucky was somewhere in Eastern Europe when he got a letter no one should have been able to deliver, addressed to “My Oldest Companion.”

My dear Demon,

Apparently I’ve overstepped my role in the Divine Plan after all of these years. I’ve spent all the time that I could fighting against the waves of European expansion and misery I had seen on the horizon, that I see now, and helping out those I could to keep from being overtaken, which is apparently more meddling than I’m allowed. When I ask why these horrible things are allowed to continue, I’m directed once again to the Divine Plan, a Plan which I’ve never been allowed to see.

I wish I could see it. I’d take it and rip it to shreds, I think. For millennia, I’ve been told that pain and suffering come up to Earth from the realm from which you hail. I know now that we allow it to happen, encourage it even. 

He claims He is upset with me, but words cannot describe how much more upset I am with Him.

Nonetheless, I don’t feel at present that losing my wings and gaining a quota of misery, like you have, would do much for me towards achieving my eventual goals. Your system works well for you; I don’t think it would work so well in my case.

Hoping to be back on Earth soon, but until then, watch over them for me? There’s no one else I trust to do so other than you, not with what I’ve seen over the centuries. 

Thank you, dearest, and see you soon,

Your angel

Bucky reread the letter until the words blurred together, tracing his finger over the sign-off before popping open a bottle of wine and nursing the pain of losing the only one that ever really mattered, even if only hopefully temporarily.

He set off two days later, after his literally hellish hangover subsided, and did everything he could to make the world a little better, the humans a little happier, skirting by on his quotas enough to stay under the radar.

Samuel would have been happy with his progress, he thought, but each task felt a little bit more like a stake to the heart he’s not actually sure he ever had.

For the first time since he’d wriggled his way out of that garden, since Eve took her infamous bite from the world’s most cursed apple, Bucky was truly alone.

He didn’t see Samuel for another four centuries.

It was the longest he’d ever gone without seeing his angel; they usually found some way back to each other after a hundred years at most, no matter how busy the other might have been. 

Bucky continued on his mission to watch over humanity in Sam’s absence, causing more happiness than he ever had misery, living on a prayer he wasn’t allowed to utter that no one would bring it to the attention of his superiors.

He was luckier than he’d always assumed.

He’d thought often over the years that Samuel had gotten so good at his job of loving humanity he’d begun to fail at his job of being an angel, of honoring the Plan and the Almighty above all else.

With each new good deed, Bucky wondered if maybe he was the same, if he’d gotten so twisted in his own vice of loving Samuel that he’d forgotten his original purpose.

More often, though, he wondered if Samuel saw it all.

That was what ran through his head as he stood in line at a recruitment office, too horrified by the breakneck technological trajectory of human wars not to join in, too worried about each unwilling foot soldier not to stay by their side as much as he could.

Bucky had been signed up for a war since the day he first fell, but this is the first time he’d ever gone willingly.

“Last name?” the recruitment officer asked, voice gruff and clipboard in hand.

“Um, Barnes,” he’d replied, appropriating the last name he’d heard yelled on the street when he was walking in. He wondered if maybe he should’ve come up with all of this earlier.

“First and middle?”

Bucky’s eyes caught on a book of American presidents on a far off desk, and he chose two random names from memory. “James Buchanan.”

The officer raised his eyebrow. “Well, that’s unfortunate. Family history, Barnes?”

A hell of a lot of lying and one easily passed physical later, Bucky had a ticket to boot camp, a direct path to Italy, and a new nickname. 

(“Buchanan’s a travesty. Need something to roll off the tongue easier. How ‘bout Bucky?” said his first friend in the army, and, like a horrible rash, it spread uncontrollably. Bucky it was, he supposed.)

He made friends mostly easily, a little begrudgingly. It was a hell of a lot easier to keep his eye on his division when they were friendly enough to trust him.

Eventually, it gained him a small squad of his own.

He helped Dum Dum avoid some shots to the chest, helped Morita stitch up a few wounds, steered Gabe away from the line of fire. He wasn’t capable of miracles, not like his angel, but he kept them alive as best he could, no matter what Europe threw at them.

For the first time in four centuries, Bucky didn’t feel alone.

They did make him miss his angel something fiercely, though, more so than he already had. A few of them had sweethearts back home, and Bucky would catch them writing or reading letters, hiding their sighs and their tears; he knew intimately what it felt like to miss someone so bad it ached, to be suddenly ripped away from the best constant in their lives.

Given how much more often he’d thought about him during the war, Bucky really shouldn’t have been surprised that that’s when Samuel showed back up. 

“Speak of the devil” applied to angels too, it seemed.

He thought he’d gotten a glimpse of him in the middle of a battlefield, had almost missed his shot because of it. He thought maybe it was a trick of the light, maybe his own imagination conjuring up images of his own wishful thinking, so he put it to the back of his mind and kept shooting, each round from his sniper rifle neatly and cleanly meeting its intended target.

Later that night, though, when the battle had subsided, he saw his angel walking into the makeshift chapel for the unit the Howlies had been running with for this op, and knew he hadn’t been imagining anything earlier.

A touch to the door revealed it was close enough to hallowed ground to burn, so Bucky waited outside it, leaned up against the door, his arms crossed over his chest. After a few hours, Samuel finally walked out, and Bucky immediately took him to the side, vanishing out of human sight as soon as he found the opportunity, Samuel following suit.

“Angel,” Bucky breathed out, bringing Sam into his arms and hugging him for the first time since they’d danced last in the fourteenth century. “I didn’t know you were back on Earth.”

“Haven’t been for long,” he replied, tentatively hugging Bucky back, like he wasn’t sure where they stood. “What do they call you now?”

“Bucky. A bad naming decision on my part led to an equally bad nicknaming decision on everyone else’s.”

“Well then, it’s good to see you again, Buck. Sorry I didn’t find you right away.” His hesitance faded little by little until he leaned his forehead against Bucky’s, letting each of them breathe in the scent of the other, still so familiar even under the grime of war. Bucky felt like he was finally home after too many years of wandering. “The war took precedence. I had to look after them.”

“I know,” Bucky said, voice free of judgment or blame, not entirely like Samuel’s the first time they’d been properly introduced. “You wouldn’t be you if you hadn’t, and we’d all be worse off for it.”

Samuel pulled away, smirking in that way he had that always left Bucky a little shaken, and nudged his side. “Did you miss me?”

Bucky thought about the letter he’d kept in his breast pocket for centuries—now withered and yellow and barely legible—about every little good deed he’d done, about yearning for someone he’d thought he might never see again each time he saw a pair of humans share an embrace.

He thought about how he wanted nothing more than to take Samuel dancing again.

Bucky’s voice came out more vulnerable than he’d intended. “More than I can say, angel. I’ve done what you asked as best I could, kept my eye on humanity as much as my position allowed, but the world felt so much more hollow without you in it.”

“I kept watch,” Samuel said, smiling. “Thank you, Bucky. For looking after them for me.”

Bucky blushed, always desperate for Samuel’s warmth, friendship, and gratitude but still not quite used to the feeling of getting it, even after having had it all these years. “Tell me about what you’ve been up to, Samuel? Hopefully something worthwhile.”

He rolled his eyes, and it somehow felt like a direct “fuck you” to the heavens, or perhaps to the Almighty in particular. “It’s Sam these days, Sam Wilson, and unfortunately I did nothing that could ever compare to being here.”

Sam spent the next two hours filling him in on all that he’d been up to on his hiatus from his beloved planet, his beloved humans, and Bucky listened with rapturous attention—perhaps the only rapture he’d ever get to experience. He’d been sent from heavenly task to heavenly task, all entirely too administrative for an angel that keen on adventure and progress, and Bucky couldn’t have helped but notice he never mentioned anyone else in his story, except for when they gave him the next job ill-suited for his strengths.

Seems like my angel was as lonely as I was, Bucky thought, sadly. Maybe I can fix that.

“Go dancing with me?” was the first thing out of his mouth when Sam had caught him all up, as if he couldn’t wait another minute to ask. “Tomorrow. There’s a little club nearby, plays all the hits from this time period. Good to dance to.” Good to press close to, he didn’t add, his heart speeding up at the thought of getting to dance cheek to cheek.

Sam’s breath caught, and his eyes said he wanted to do nothing more, but he shook his head. “We can’t dance here, Bucky. I’m a Black man. Our own men would get to us before the Axis ever could, for a multitude of reasons.”

“My squad can miss me for a night if yours can, Sammy. All those years we stayed out of the human eye. I’m sure we could manage it for just one night.”

Sam looked back at his little wartime chapel and pulled his jacket tighter around himself. “I’ve got a job to do, Buck. And so do you. I’ve got to get back to my unit, and so do you.”

Before Bucky could try one more time, Sam started walking off towards where he and his men slept. “And Buck?” he added over his shoulder. “If you’re gonna hang around my chapel, at least hide yourself next time. I had a quarter of the men I usually do come by tonight.”

The next night, Bucky waited outside Sam’s chapel, invisible as instructed, with a radio he’d convinced the general nearby to let him borrow for a few hours.

When the last man walked out of the chapel, and Bucky knew Sam was done for the night, he snuck inside, ignoring the heat licking at his heels with every step.

“No one’s around to stop us, angel,” he said when Sam was turned around, chuckling when he startled. “General gave me his radio. Plenty of songs on here good for dancin’.”

“This is holy ground,” Sam said, confused, “and I know good and well the General didn’t just give you that radio.”

“Every step is probably causing a new blister, but once I’m in position I generally stay there, being a sniper and all. My feet can take it.” He flipped the radio on, fussing with the frequencies until he heard music. “And maybe he didn’t give it to me, but he’s not gonna miss it. He’s too busy with the secretary he wrote his wife back home not to worry about. Still gotta make those quotas, angel, and this one was for a good cause.”

The voice of Dick Haymes rang through the slightly fuzzy radio as Sam walked towards him, hesitantly taking his hand and letting Bucky pull him in close.

Would it be wrong to kiss

Seeing I feel like this

Would it be wrong to try?

“I’ve missed you so much, angel,” Bucky said, his cheek against Sam’s, their steps in perfect time. “Was worried I’d never see you again.”

Would it be wrong to stay

Here in your arms this way

Under this starry sky?

“It felt so wrong, going that long without seeing you,” Sam whispered back, his voice impossibly soft. “Made me realize how much I dislike the rest of the divine. None of them made jokes with me, looked on fondly at the humans with me, put on a little-too-on-the-nose impression of the Almighty for me. I was so lonely.”

If it is wrong

Then why were you sent to me

Why am I content to be

With you forever?

Each step felt like pure agony, each sway pure bliss. “We were always best when we were alone together. Being alone alone is a tragedy even when you don’t live as long as we have.”

When I need you so much

And I have waited so long

It must be right

It can't be wrong

Sam stopped before the last dregs of the song had faded out, stopping Bucky with him. He just stared at him, their faces scant inches apart, Bucky’s arms still around Sam’s waist, Sam’s around his neck. Bucky reached underneath Sam’s shirt, felt the muscles at his back where his wings would be if Sam weren’t passing himself off as human, and decided it’d been long enough.

He kissed him.

Sam kissed him back without hesitation, opening his mouth almost immediately, letting Bucky push in closer.

Bucky had tasted all the best and greatest food and drink every nation and people have had to offer since the beginning of time, and not a single one of them came anywhere close to the taste of Sam Wilson.

It took many millennia, but Bucky finally understood why humans worshiped.

Sam pulled away.

His expression was a terrifying mixture of confusion, shame, anger, and something that left Bucky with just the barest tinge of hope. “I can’t. We can’t. This, this isn’t—”

“Isn’t in the Plan?” Bucky asked, taking a painful step forward, for more reasons than just the holy ground. “What happened to tearing that to shreds?”

Sam let his wings out, just for a moment, as beautiful as the last time Bucky saw them, and wrapped them around himself, a comfort he’d allowed himself for many years. He kept stepping back until he reached the exit. “I have a job to do, Bucky. I can’t. I can’t do this, not now, not with you. Not ready for this.”

He ran off, then, his wings retracted, and didn’t look back, leaving Bucky with nothing but a broken heart and a stolen radio, playing perhaps the most sour love song he’d ever heard.

The next day, Bucky’s unit got called away to a mission in the Alps. 

He allowed himself a regretful glance in the direction of Sam’s division, whispered a goodbye he knew his angel wouldn’t hear, and tried his best to put on a smile when his friends teased him about his long face.

Two days later, he fell off a train high in the mountains.

On his way down, he thought back to the other two times he’d fallen: once from Heaven, and once for Sam.

He’d lost an arm and all his new friends this time, but it still hurt the least of them all.

It’s been almost eighty years since Bucky Barnes last saw Sam Wilson.

He doesn’t even know if Sam goes by the same name these days, if maybe he’d changed it back to Samuel, if he’d gone with a new last name at the end of the war.

He doesn’t know if the Almighty had called him back from Earth, once again angry at Sam’s unending mercy and compassion.

They’ve gone longer without speaking before, without letters and without visits, but Bucky knew as soon as Sam left that chapel back in 1945 that that time had been different.

He’s not sure if he’ll ever see his angel again.

As he usually is, even all these years later, Sam’s on his mind as he strolls through New Orleans, jeans tight and jacket leather, sunglasses covering his yellow eyes and gloves covering his newly metal hand. He comes across a little hole in the wall store called “Divine Records” that’s got an easel holding a copy of Dick Haymes & the Song Spinners’ “It Can’t Be Wrong” in the window display, and he finds his feet carrying him inside before he can really think the decision through.

The record store isn’t on hallowed ground, divine or not, but Bucky still feels the sharp burns in his feet the way he had before.

The records are grouped by decade, genre, and artist, so he makes his way over to the 1940s section and finds a young woman adding a few new records to the bins. She’s got a name tag that Bucky can’t quite make out, but it’s enough to make him reasonably sure she works here. 

Against his better judgment, he looks back to the window display before approaching the worker. “Excuse me, miss, but is that record in the window for sale? The Dick Haymes?”

She looks up, a slightly worried smile on her face which tells Bucky the answer is no before she even says it. He resolves himself to going home without it. “Sorry, sir, but no. The owner of the place is particularly protective over that one.”

“I might make an exception for you, though,” comes a smooth voice from behind him that Bucky would know absolutely anywhere.

Bucky whips around and takes in every ounce of Sam, dressed casually in well fitting jeans and a form-fitting polo shirt, a box of records in his hands. “Hi there, angel,” he says, a lot more casually than he feels. “It’s been a while.”

Sam sits his box of records on a table and wrings his hands together, a habit he’d picked up when he’d started having to hide his wings. He looks over at the girl Bucky had first approached. “You good to watch over everything for a bit, Lila?”

Lila’s eyebrows are sky high, her expression both bewildered and incredibly intrigued. “You just offered your most prized possession to a man who just called you ‘angel.’ Take all the time you need, boss. I have a feeling you’re going to need a lot of it.”

Sam grabs his hand and pulls him towards what Bucky assumes is a back room, and Bucky follows without any argument or resistance as he always has. He looks back over his shoulder. “Thanks for all the help, Lila!”

She smiles and waves him off, returning to her records while Bucky returns to Sam. 

He leads him into a small office with a table and two beat up chairs in the corner. He sits down in one and gestures for Bucky to take the seat across from him. He takes his time sitting down, looking around at all the pieces Sam’s collected over the years, from letters to pictures to paintings to paperweights.

When his eyes catch on a few weathered scrolls Bucky is absolutely sure Sam took from a burning library of Alexandria, he laughs.

“I thought you were gonna die that day,” he says, nodding over to the scrolls. “I was terrified I wasn’t going to be able to pull you from that fire, and I’d lose the only damn thing that ever mattered to me.”

“Didn’t know you cared about my scrolls that much,” Sam replies, a twinkle in his eye, his grin toothy, his tongue pressed up against the gap between his front teeth. “Woulda grabbed more if I’d known that’s what got you going.”

“You’ve had me going since the first day I laid eyes on you, angel,” Bucky says without thinking, biting his lip to keep his mouth closed when he realizes what he’d said. Sam had run away the last time they’d gotten this real, and Bucky wants nothing less than to lose him again over something as stupid as not being able to hold his tongue.

But Sam doesn’t run this time, just takes Bucky’s left hand and takes off his glove, apparently able to sense something different there with whatever sixth angelic sense he possesses. He runs his fingers over the metal of his palm and lets out a shaky breath. “I’d thought you’d died.”

Bucky closes his fingers around Sam’s hand and convinces himself not to pull him into his lap, not just yet. He doesn’t do anything just yet, actually, figuring Sam’s not quite done.

“With your squad as decorated as it was, everyone in the military heard about you falling from that train in the Alps. Nobody ever found your body, so I waited for you to come back, but you never did. Watched the enlistment forms like a hawk, waiting for someone who matched your profile, kept my ear to the wind for some of your more signature tricks. Put out a couple of my old hints hoping you’d find me here. After a few decades, I figured I’d lost you for good. Wasn’t sure if it was because you were dead or because I’d left you alone in that chapel that night.”

Bucky brings Sam’s hand up to his lips, smiling against it when Sam shivers. “I never faulted you for that, angel, even if it did hurt. I stopped looking for your hints, not because I was mad, but because I was too afraid you wouldn’t want to see me, and too afraid to look to find out. I’d gotten everyone into all kinds of trouble with Eve’s curiosity; thought this time I might try out that whole ‘ignorance is bliss’ thing. It’s a shitty motto, apparently, because there’s nothing I wanted less than to make you fear the worst this long.”

“We’ve gone longer than this without seeing each other, my dear demon,” Sam says, getting up to grab a record in an unmarked sleeve. “It could have been worse.”

The first notes of “It Can’t Be Wrong” fills the tiny room when he sets the pin down on the player, and he holds out his hand toward Bucky, smiling when he takes it. “Do over?”

“Anything for you, angel,” he says, standing up from his little chair. He pulls Sam close and presses their cheeks together, almost a perfect mirror of how they’d been back during the war, and warmth fills his body, so much softer than the flames at his heels.

They keep swaying even after the music stops, the white noise from the end of the record filling the tiny room. Sam eventually breaks the silence, telling Bucky all about his life since the last time they’d met, how he’d settled in New Orleans after they’d all gone home from the Western Front. 

“I got really into the music scene here,” he says, listing off the jazz greats he met and helped promote as best he could. “Collected enough records to open up a store, but I’m only here half the time. I spend a lot of my time helping rebuild the city, building up new housing after Katrina.

“He’d told me all those years ago he’d never flood like that again, and yet I watched it happen with my own two eyes. Watched friends and neighbors and acquaintances lose everything so quickly.” He puts his head on Bucky’s shoulder and sighs, stopping their swaying. “I’ve been doing what I can to help since then, even when He or another angel tries to put me elsewhere. They’ve tried calling me back up about a hundred times now, but none of them have bothered to take my wings yet, so here I am. Still in New Orleans, still looking after humans like I’ve been all along.”

“It’s where you’re meant to be, angel,” Bucky says simply, holding him closer.

“If I ask where you’re meant to be, are you gonna give me something cheesy back?”

Bucky sets them back into motion, moving with the music that hasn’t been playing for twenty minutes. “Depends. Is ‘wherever you are’ cheesy?”

“Nah, Buck, it’s perfect.” He tilts his head then, pulling away to look Bucky in the eyes, their bodies still as close as can be. “Do you still go by Bucky? Do they call you something else now?”

“Still just Bucky. Couldn’t ever bring myself to change it, not when I had the best fifteen seconds of my life as Bucky.” He presses a soft kiss to Sam’s nose, smiling when it brings a blush to his cheeks. “Besides, outside of all my time with you, I felt more alive in those few years than I’d ever had before.”

“Well then, Bucky, I can’t let Lila run the store by herself for too much longer, but we close at seven. Have any plans around 7:15?”

Bucky spins Sam around one last time before he leaves. “As it happens, I think I’ve got an appointment with my favorite angel.”

Sam smiles brighter than the sun after a storm when he bids Bucky goodbye, and it keeps him going for the next few hours.

When he comes back at 7:14, armed with beignets from the small shop Sam had mentioned offhand earlier, he knows his own smile matches perfectly as Sam leads him back to his home, a promise of the continuation of what they’d stopped all the way back in 1945 in his eyes.

A few hours later, in the belly of Sam’s bedroom, surrounded by all of the knick knacks that didn’t quite make it to his office, Bucky’s simply doing his damnedest not to blink. 

He doesn’t want to miss a single second of the miracle in front of him, of Sam pulling himself up and dropping back down on his cock, thighs flexing under Bucky’s hands. 

He’d been waiting thousands of years for it, after all.

His expression is cycling through every motion of pleasure, as heavenly as the angel wings on his back, slowly unfolding the longer and harder he fucks himself on Bucky’s cock. 

When they’d reached Sam’s home after walking from the record store, the wings had been tightly pressed against his back, present as they never are when humans can seem them, tucked in the way he generally prefers when he’s not flying, about the size of a particularly stuffed backpack, assuming said backpack was stuffed with about a million feathers. 

With the first delicious press of Bucky’s tongue inside of Sam, though, his whole body had shivered, the wings jolted out of their impeccably kept invisible cage, slowly protruding out from Sam’s back with each moan, groan, and oversensitive hiss. 

Bucky’s having a hell of a time trying to figure out where to look between the wings—more outstretched than he’d seen in a very long time—Sam’s gorgeous face, and his pretty cock, surrounded by tufts of dark hair that Bucky wants to run his fingers through while he sucks Sam down his throat. 

For now, though, he settles for gripping harder on Sam’s thighs, hard enough to bruise, and thinks about his angel getting briefly called back to Heaven, flying up bearing the mark of his demon. 

Take that, Almighty, Bucky thinks, watching as Sam starts to shake apart on top of him, his wings easily thirteen feet wide by now, and still stretching.

“Come on, angel, take what you want,” is what he says aloud, fully aware Sam’s never taken anything in his approximately ten thousand years of life, much less ever admitted to wanting. “Whatever it is you want, I’ll give you, Sammy. Just ask.”

Bucky also knows that, despite the fact he’s been on the outs with the Almighty for centuries, Sam’s still never been in the habit of asking the devil for anything.

He thinks that this time, he might just make an exception. 

“Fuck me, Bucky,” is what he grits out moments later, too righteous and holy and stubborn to want to ask, but too desperate not to. 

Bucky waits just a moment too long, faking consideration long enough to tease, like he hasn’t been dreaming of this moment since he first laid eyes on Sam outside the fiery gates of Eden. 

“Please,” Sam adds on, angelic voice filled with so much desperation the request borders on prayer. His wings extend out even further as he begs, trembling and beautiful. 

Interesting, Bucky thinks, for perhaps the millionth time, reaching out to touch the nearest feather, grinning when Sam’s entire body jolts, his head dropping back to groan. 

Bucky leans back himself then, keeping his torso half-reclined using the support of his forearms, and fucks up into his angel right as he sinks down, and Sam damn near loses it. 

It’s a beautiful thing, he thinks, watching an angel lose control. 

Sam falls forward too, resting his hands on Bucky’s chest and melting at the change in angle. He pulls himself forward and pushes himself back, Bucky’s own hips following his rhythm, and it’s not long till Sam’s wingspan is approaching its full twenty-three feet, roan wings shining in the dim light of the room despite their dusty color. 

Bucky brings Sam down for a kiss, the first they’ve had all night, the first they’ve had since nineteen forty-fucking-five, but Sam doesn’t pull away this time, doesn’t go running. He just melts into his lips until his kisses become gasps, sneaking closer to the edge.

Bucky wraps a hand around his cock, and it only takes one, two, three strokes until Sam is shuddering above him, Bucky kissing him through it. 

When Sam finally sits back, sated and spent, Bucky admires the full picture of him: wings stretched all the way across his room, mere centimeters from the wall on either side, body strong, muscled, sweaty, and more relaxed than he’s ever seen it. The tired, pinched expression Bucky had seen on his face far too often since around the eleventh or so century is gone, replaced by pleasure and something Bucky knows has been on his own face while looking at Sam for millennia now. 

Heaven, he thinks, bringing Sam back down for another kiss as he falls over the edge himself, has nothing on this.

He wakes up the next morning in Sam’s bed to the light streaming through the curtains, blanketing his angel in a pattern almost resembling a halo.

All these years since I’ve fallen, he thinks, softly tracing a finger along Sam’s jaw to wake him, and I’ve finally found something worth my devotion.