Dammit. Fury glowered at Steve and bit back another epithet. Nick's mama used to do that to him, just like that, a slap to the side of the head whenever he misbehaved. True, cursing in church was definitely misbehaving and now, as he remembered his mother, Nick felt guilty for it. He glanced up and found himself sinking lower in the pew as the pastor said I see a lot of old faces- and some new ones. Nick felt like that motherfucker was looking right at him. He didn't like this place, it was so different from what he was used to- though, to be fair- it had been some years since he'd been into any kind of church.
Somewhere along the way, Nick had just stopped going. Maybe it was because of time. So many years to his life and he was so busy and here was Cap as devoted as ever but Nick would still write that off to years encased in an ice block just to feel better about his own religious negligence. Maybe it was the military, the wars, the blood, the violence. So many deaths and so much destruction and a particular biting guilt came with the territory when you could decimate foreign places of worship and give less respect to another's god than you would give to your own. Or maybe when Nick's mama died his faith died with her, a flame extinguished, rekindled only in moments of great duress and in the darkest hours of the night Nick Fury hated himself because he couldn't pray.
His impiety could be explained by any of these reasons or all of them or none of them and it wasn't something Nick wanted to dwell on but here, in a house of God, it was impossible not to. Things that had seemed so alien just moments before were now settling on him with the familiarity of nostalgia. The cadence of the pastor's tone's, the rapt looks on the face of the elderly, the whispered giggles of mischievous children. Beside him, Cap's presence just like his mother's, stern and devout and commanding Nick felt as fidgety as a five year old forced into stillness. That calm was broken by a word from the pulpit as everyone around him got to their feet.
"What the fuck?" Nick mouthed and stared questioningly at Steve. He noticed then, the hymn books that everyone was flipping through. Oh, right. He stood, clearing his throat and opening his own book as he craned his neck to glance at Steve's copy to see what page they were supposed to be on.