The Absent Prayer (Comics Canon: The Past)

[he_that_stands_it_now]

It's been a bad day.

Honestly, it's been a bad week.

Between the mess on the beach the other day and the hulking monstrosity of Nazi engineering making it's way towards him with massive flailing flaming limbs, Bucky Barnes has started to wonder if his bad temper, his foul mouth, and his flippant treatment of authority hasn't gone all the way up the line to the Big Guy Himself and gotten him attention he really didn't want.

Nonetheless, if He got him into this mess than maybe He can get him out, so he spends a couple of precious seconds in between when he lands and when he jumps again to get off a silent prayer.

Dear Whoever Is Listening, I promise I'll never talk at the movies again if you just get my backside out of the frying pan here!

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[godofbadideas]

Hours later, Loki is spent, loose-limbed and for the moment, sated, and using his mortal for a conveniently warm pillow, smiling faintly, and skin humming with built-up power, just underneath.

[he_that_stands_it_now]

His mortal's jaw should be sore, he knows it, but it isn't and he's apparently a pretty goddamn good pillow.

"I'm just gonna go with the flow. Apparently, my hindbrain knows it's fuckin' business."

[godofbadideas]

Loki chuckles warm and low.

"It sure does," he agrees, voice rough.

[he_that_stands_it_now]

He looks down at his arm, at the metal arm that's no longer wearing a red star. Instead, there's a handprint charred into it, black as night. That's better, even if it makes him think of things that have nothing and everything to do with who he is as a Soldier.

"You don't do things by halves, do you?"

Neither did he, to be fair.

[godofbadideas]

"Nothing and never."

Loki is a very smug little god right now.

[he_that_stands_it_now]

He's still looking and he's realizing it only looks like a hand from this angle. A glance in the mirror and it's something else, like a bird, something with wings and a glint of metal where the eye should be.

[godofbadideas]

"Do you like it?" Loki asks after letting him look at it for a moment.

[he_that_stands_it_now]

"I like it better than the star. And I like the person who put it there a hell of a lot better."

[godofbadideas]

"Good."

Because James Buchanan Barnes was his.

[he_that_stands_it_now]

He settles back into the bed a little further, pulling the covers up to his hips even if he's not cold. There's something about the feel of blankets on a body that helps a person relax.

Then he yawns.

"Think I earned a bit of passin' out, Milkshake. You good with that?"

[godofbadideas]

"So long as you don't try to go anywhere while I'm using you for a pillow," he replies into his mortal's skin.

[he_that_stands_it_now]

"Wasn't plannin' on it," he says, and then he's dropping off like they're paying him for it.

[godofbadideas]

Loki takes some time to just.

Bask.

For a while. It's really indescribably nice to have someone like this, whose very existence gives him power. Eventually though, he has to drop off to sleep himself; his mortal wore him out, in the best possible way.