#deckle edge notebook | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

penguinmerchant · 6 months ago

Text

"Pet" Binding (with a twist)

This binding is a little different than what I've done so far! This is "Pet" by C.S.Pacat, but with notes from @lucky-clover-gazette. The notes on this read along were SO funny and I knew I wanted to feature them in a bound work, but they wouldn't really make sense without the context of the original work. And so I mushed both the original work and the notes together!

So the idea here was to make it look like a composition notebook, complete with stickers on the front and (as we'll soon see...) drawings and scrawled notes on the inside. "Sam Reads CaPri" is the tag that Lucky Clover uses for her read along notes, and so I used it here just to make it clear this wasn't just the canon work. I used black and silver marbled paper to complete the look of the composition notebook, and more direct-to-film transfers for the "stickers" on the cover. I think it turned out fantastically!

More pics and a LOT of notes under the cut.

So I thought this was a really interesting project because I wanted to use the original work but add to it. I...acquired a PDF of Pet (let me have this one, I bought 2 official english copies of the short stories AND a Polish one I can't even read!) and messed with the margins a bit to make more room for Lucky Clover's notes. Here's what it looks like inside.

This whole thing was done in Libre Office, by the way. I'm sure there's a better program out there that would have done this WAY easier but I didn't want to have to learn how to use Adobe (or pay for it, honestly). But so the little notes are added with textboxes and placed next to their respective quotes, and the quotes themselves are highlighted with highlighters used for bibles, which is apparently a whole subset of office supplies I never knew about! I needed those highlighters specifically because I wanted to have archival color (no idea if regular highlighters are, these are just the only things that came up from a quick search) AND they're really good because they are made not to bleed through really thin bible paper. So on regular paper you can barely see them through the other side at all. They're great! Thanks bible highlighters, I know you thought you would be used for more holy purposes but really there's no better writer than Pacat, so you're in good hands!

So the other problem was that some of the notes were too long to shove into the margins, even after I had made them bigger than normal. That meant post-it notes! Now these aren't actual post-it notes, obviously (I can't imagine how terrible it would be to line those up in the printer) but I used colored printer paper and cut them to size, and it worked out. I used a bit of glue to get them down, and made it so that all of them fold away from the text so that everything is still readable. And then I made some of them poke out the top and sides, because I liked the way it looked.

There are little doodles throughout, some of which I colored in with a highlighter, and I the first word in each section is in a scribbly font, which I thought was funny. All of the notes are likewise in a handwritten font (Amanda Rose) and slightly rotated so that they're not in line with the text.

I also did not trim any of the sides of this textblock, so it's kind of uneven (deckled edges are common on the long side of the textblock, not so much on the top and bottom) but I kind of needed all the space. No endbands in this one either, I wanted to keep it more notebooky and the uneven pages meant it would have been impossible to do anyway. Everything else was bound normally, so aside from the two thousand years it took me to typeset this it was a pretty easy bind.

Oh, and last but not least, the endpapers:

Plain brown butcher paper, in honor of Berenger.

#capri #my binding #imp press #fic binding #fanbinding #ancel #berenger #I feel like this is a true transformative work #this was SO MUCH FUN to do #there were so many problems I had to figure out how to solve #and I think it looks great #it makes me laugh every time I see it

64 notes · View notes

intrepidacious · 3 years ago

Text

every dream gone

summary: After the events of Winter Soldier, Bucky slowly realizes just how much he lost after his fall.

pairing: bucky barnes x f!reader

word count: 3.2k

warnings: bucky being sad; vague mentions of brainwashing and a whole lot of guilt; don't look for a happy ending with this one folks (i'm sorry 🥲)

please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.

a/n: i started writing this fic back in september and it took me until now to gather the emotional willpower to finish it. blame this song that inspired the whole thing.

masterlist | read on ao3

It took Bucky a while to remember you, after everything, but he did.

The first memory came back while he was on the run. He'd been in Europe for a while by then, sleeping in freight cars, never staying anywhere for longer than a week, trying to keep a low profile while both HYDRA and Steve were still frantically looking for him everywhere. Those early days were the worst.

He spent most of his time on trains and tried to figure out why he hated it so much.

Being in England calmed him a bit. It was nice getting used to hearing people speak English around him again, and not in a tone that commanded obedience.

He didn't have much to go off, just scattered memories that didn't quite seem to fit together. There was always something off about them, something like the taste of metal where it shouldn't be. This time, the fragments led him to a flea market.

There were only a handful of people dotted in between the stands, which was probably for the best. His long sleeves usually attracted some curious glances this late into July.

He didn't exactly have money to spare for knick-knacks or secondhand souvenirs, but his feet carried him straight to one stand in particular, without him even realizing. His fingertips grazed along the spines of old paperbacks that were lined up like soldiers, but Bucky didn't spare them more than a glance.

He stopped at the next table over, a small frown on his face.

"Look at all those colors, Buck!"

Pastels and acrylics, steel nib fountain pens and piles of hand-bound sketchbooks. The woman selling them looked up from her novel when he didn't move for a whole minute, his eyes fixed on the notebooks.

"You can pick 'em up if you can't decide, you know," she said.

He nodded, blinked, almost embarrassed at the way his fingers shook as he picked up one of the books. It was bound in blue linen, and the deckle edged pages stuck to his gloves.

"You draw?" the woman asked, in a way that was more politeness than actual interest.

"My friend did," Bucky found himself saying.

Hands covered in charcoal. The smell of paper and something else.

"How dare you!" A laugh, carelessly loud and graceless. The most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. "My nose looks nothing like that!"

The memory passed through him softly, almost dreamlike, and for a second, he didn't know whether he wanted to cry or scream. He did neither.

The woman was looking at him strangely, but she accepted the note he handed her for the sketchbook, even though it wasn't Sterling.

"Young man," she called after him, and he almost wanted to laugh. "You're gonna need this, too." And she handed him a pen, as if she'd known, as if there was something in his face that told her how lost he felt.

It was cheap, surely, but it was also the first gift he'd gotten in decades, and so he kept it in his chest pocket. Right above his heart.

***

The next memory came not too long after that.

He was sitting in a rundown coffee shop in Edinburgh, barely paying attention to the room around him while he tried putting his past onto the page. The book was filling so achingly slowly it made him want to throw it against a wall most days.

A good chunk of it was about Steve.

Bucky supposed that was to be expected, because he'd been the one to first make him remember, and because it was Steve.

So page after page was detailing pneumonias and ill-fitting jackets and bruised knuckles in Bucky's narrow writing, trying to piece together a life that should have stayed his. It was desperate work, futile work most days, but he tried anyway.

And then the café owner switched stations on the old, dusty radio in the corner, and there was the song.

It took only a couple of notes until the images struck like lightning.

Swinging skirts and heels clacking on wooden floors. The smell of sweat and hairspray and something else. Something like May bells.

"You're quite good at this, aren't you?" Hands tightening around his neck in the most pleasant embrace.

"Only as good as my partner."

How could a simple hum sound so content? "And I ain't exactly called Rogers, either. But you’re the one leading."

"And thank God for both."

A dip, a scream. And that laugh again. He wanted to bottle it up and get drunk on it for the rest of eternity.

When the song ended, Bucky was shaking with it. He'd broken the pen in his hand, and the dark ink smeared all over his palm like black blood.

He didn’t do so well with presents these days.

***

He remembered your name when he heard a mother call out for her child in a park and it stopped him in his tracks because the corners of his mouth started to lift on their own accord. It was like you were muscle memory, your name so deeply ingrained that his body remembered you long before his mind could catch up.

And your name.

Whispered in darkened picture theaters until your skin prickled with goosebumps, shouted across dance halls sweltering with heat, spoken with reverence on dizzying fair rides. Bucky’d said it again, and again, and again, and for so long he couldn’t think of anything sweeter than the taste of it on his tongue.

He tried it out now, and it came out like ash.

The sound of his name on your lips came to him only hours later, because he kept prodding at that part of his mind that kept you hidden from him, kept trying to unlock the gate to his forgotten memories until finally it slid open an inch.

He was trying to make dinner.

He’d not had a warm meal for weeks at that point, but the past few days had been good and he’d bought vanilla extract for pancakes. The sugary smell filled his tiny apartment, but he didn’t even notice at first, not until he opened the window and then turned back to the stove.

“Bucky.”

Like a breath of air that echoed from deep within until it reached him and left him shaken.

He said your name again, called it into the silence of the room. It didn’t answer him.

He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than going crazy, and so he breathed in again.

“James! It’s almost nine, we’re gonna be late.” Nails drumming against the wood of a dresser. You’d painted it with flowers, purple and blue and yellow. Beautiful.

“And whose fault is that, sweetheart?”

His fingers wrapping around your waist, pulling you close, so young, so human. Your perfume, soft and lingering mist-like between you, and something else. Something like Christmas morning.

Smiles had come so easy to him back then. “I’ve been sittin’ by the door for a good twenty minutes now, waitin’ anxiously for you to finish up.”

“If you’re getting so anxious over me, you needn’t have waited, Buck.”

“I’d wait my whole life if it went you’re comin’ down the stairs, sweetheart.”

He hadn’t noticed he’d slid to the floor, trembling.

The pancakes burned.

***

Your name was so much and yet so little at the same time.

Bucky tried finding any record of you, in libraries, newspaper archives, even using a computer once he figured out how to go online. But you’d been a normal girl, a lovely, perfect, beautiful, normal girl. That had never been enough for the history books.

He had to put you together again himself, slowly. The smallest details took him months.

You would always get holes in your tights and scold him for prodding at them. You used to hate getting your picture taken, but you would benignly let Steve draw you as long as he kept you entertained. You’d liked dancing, and flowers, and sweet things, and somehow, inexplicably, you’d liked him.

“You are the worst date I’ve ever had.”

The taste of whipped cream and chocolate on your lips, and the feeling of your fingers curling into the hair at the base of his neck. That little sound at the back of your throat.

“You were saying, sweetheart?”

Bucky’s hand balled into a fist. It wasn’t fair.

The worst part was that you were barely more than the memory of a beautiful dream, hazy and blurred. He was well aware he didn’t deserve good things anymore, but these faint half-images collecting in his brain were nothing short of cruel.

"I can't remember her face,” he told the only person who might have understood, because he himself didn’t. “Why can I remember every single person that I had to ...” He trailed off, dragging his hand over his face. “And yet I can't remember her face?"

Steve's hand was on his shoulder, a gesture that should feel comforting in its familiarity. Instead, Bucky had never felt this small in his own skin.

Wrong shoulder.

"I'll see what I can do," Steve said calmly, but there was a helplessness in his voice that made Bucky’s stomach churn.

It wasn’t supposed to spill out of his own eyes.

***

You would have loved Wakandan sunsets.

They were richer, more colorful than the ones Bucky remembered, but maybe that didn’t actually mean much. The beautiful things had a habit of evading him.

Sometimes, he was selfish enough to wish it had stayed that way, because at least in forgetting, he hadn’t known to miss anything at all. Years and decades worth of lack came crashing through to drown him now, more and more frequent, as if they were trying to make up for lost time. Or mocking him.

But you would have loved the sunsets, and so he tried to love them, too, just like he was always meant to do.

“Do you have to leave already?”

A sniff, a petulant sigh, his limbs heavy and warm, but resolve unwavering. He’d fancied himself so smart, then. “You know I do.”

Daybreak kisses that tasted contently like sleep. Slowly untangling his fingers from yours, something cool grazing them.

Steve brought back a small package, and that was all that was left to find of the part of the past that he’d shared with you. A thin stack of official papers, the dog tags he’d worn in Austria, and a ring.

Bucky sat down.

He knew, rationally, that you were long gone even before he saw the official documents. He’d never expected you to wait for him when it had always been the other way around. Still, to read it so plainly was like his insides were being twisted into the tightest knot, and his heart, his carefully guarded heart that had only just started to remember its own rhythm stuttered painfully. Like it was sick of this whole dance, the waiting, the longing for something so out of reach. So lost to time.

He didn’t want this, any of this, but there was nothing he could do but stare and wait for his vision to clear.

“There’s something else,” Steve said, his voice far away like he’d been wrapped in cotton. “Do you remember the house?”

A rickety porch swing and a picket fence that needed bleaching. Thorny rose bushes blooming in all your favorite colors. Two spare rooms.

“Are we going to be hostin’ a lot of guests, then?” That smug little curl of your lip he liked to kiss.

“I hope not.” Arms wrapping around your waist, pulling you close. Always the same gesture, as familiar as the smell. Vanilla and peonies, and something else. “We could find a more permanent use, don’t you think?”

“She kept it. It’s still there.”

Bucky traced the letters of your name with his thumb as if somehow, somewhere, you might have felt the familiar caress. It looked lonely there, all on its own.

Maybe it was lucky that he’d long run out of screams, because he might have never stopped.

“Thank you,” he said, and even though it didn’t seem sufficient, Steve nodded.

Bucky threaded your ring onto the chain of his dog tags and closed it around his neck before he hid them under his vest, the metal like a ghostly touch over his heart.

***

It took Bucky five more years to make it back to New York. Well. Five more years passed.

He’d lost so many of them it didn’t even seem to matter at this point.

The slip of paper had been kept inside an envelope he’d found between the books in Steve’s apartment, waiting for him, just like he’d said it would. At least some things were still there.

The bus drive took an eternity, but his feet found their way on their own accord. They’d known it well, once, after all.

He thought the hardest part would be to turn around the final corner and see it again, but that wasn’t it. He’d dreaded the drawn shades, the overgrown garden, the withered flowers, the faded paint on the front door. Dreading things made them easier to bare, sometimes, he’d learned that.

No, the hardest part was seeing the sign. Cottage for sale.

And the quiet.

The mailbox was battered from decades of wind and weather, but underneath the rust he could still see the remnants of your handprint, cracked golden yellow on the dark metal. It disappeared under his vibranium fingers.

“See? We left our mark now. We have to stay here forever.”

He found the key still inside. He used to scold you for leaving it so recklessly, but you kept losing every spare you got made, and besides, times were different, then. You knew the neighbors. So did he.

“Don’t forget, it’s Mrs Hopper’s birthday on Wednesday, and you promised to mow her lawn.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

“And the Sawyers asked if you could take a look at their furnace, because it’s been acting up.”

“You’d think they’d hire a professional for that sorta thing.”

“Maybe you’re just nicer to look at.”

The plot next door had been leveled. The curtains in all the other houses were drawn, even though it was a lovely spring evening.

Bucky’s steps were heavy as he climbed the steps to the red front door. It was like he could hear whispers coming from all sides, his head pounding with the weight of something that was not quite there yet, not quite clear, not quite something.

The key slid into the lock.

“Leave your shoes outside, Buck, you’ll track mud everywhere.”

He almost did.

The first step inside was like going through the looking glass and finding himself in a world so different, and yet so familiar. Because he didn’t recognize the painting on the wall, or the color of the cabinets, or the rug next to the stairs.

But there was that smell. Vanilla and peonies. Something like baking and spring, something like home.

He carefully pulled the door closed behind him, the floorboards softly creaking. Dust billowed.

And then more memories came rushing in, as if they'd been waiting for the moment he crossed the threshold.

"Ready?"

"Yes!" He could feel your cheeks lift in a smile and grinned as he slowly pulled his hands away from your eyes. Could feel the gasp that fell from your lips as you took in the sight in front of you.

"Do you like it?"

"Are you kidding me? I love it!"

“I love you.”

He thought he saw movement just out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned, it was only his own grave reflection staring back at him out of one of the dirty windows. Still, he couldn’t help but feel like the ghosts of the past were surrounding him.

“There you are,” they seemed to say. “What took you so long?”

“Just picking up something sweet for my best girl.”

“This is exactly why I’m gonna marry you.”

“Just that? Really? What about my other qualities?”

“Those I tolerate.”

The plates his ma had given you, the porcellain chipped with decades of use, stacked neatly in the cabinets, gathering dust. Your favorite brass pot was out next to the sink, as if you’d just left it there to dry, intending to use it again in a couple of hours.

In the living room, the horrible curtains your aunt had forced upon you had finally disappeared, and despite everything, Bucky could feel himself smile. The bookshelf was still overflowing.

“We’re gonna run out of space soon, you know that, right?”

“Well, build me a new shelf, then!”

Another promise he’d broken.

He had to go upstairs. He knew it, even though every single cell of his body was screaming at him not to go.

Seventeen steps. The second to last was the one that creaked.

Deciding which door to open first was like choosing his own hell. In the end, the house decided for him, because the wailing behind the one to the far right sounded so alive he almost bolted through the entrance.

It had been locked, and Bucky only realized why when it was already too late.

It was the most desolate room yet, cobwebbed and stale, furniture hidden underneath white linens. A dusty wooden mobile dangled from the ceiling, trembling as the house settled, casting eery shadows over the dirtied green walls.

“Aren’t you a bit overzealous there, love?” He dotted some green on your nose and you shrieked.

“Do you wanna be caught unawares?”

“As far as I know, there’s a bit of a preparation period involved.”

“Hm. Maybe we should just get a head start, then.”

He couldn’t bear it a second time, so he took a lung full of stale air and opened the bedroom door.

“I love you, I love you, I love you!”

Everything smelled like you, had your loving touch on it, had been allowed to live alongside you for all this time when he hadn’t been. The wilted flowers in the vase by the window. A book on the nightstand, your bookmark tucked between the pages because you weren’t quite done with it yet.

You weren’t done yet.

A pair of reading glasses lay on top of it, and Bucky almost laughed because he couldn’t quite picture you wearing them, and then, suddenly, he realized he could picture you, and his hand reached out blindly because he remembered that it was there.

“You know I hate these things.”

He didn’t let go of your hand for a second. “Come on, sweetheart. Don’t you want me to have something’a yours to keep me company?”

Your laugh, again, and again. “You’re so lucky I love you.”

The bed creaked softly when he sat down on its edge, the frame shaking in his grip, and hey. There you were.

There was your smile.

It seemed to echo, or maybe he only wished it did.

“I’ll be back so soon, you won’t even notice I’m gone, sweetheart.”

“You better.”

The way you looked at him. Like you really believed him when he told the both of you that everything was going to be fine. That you would be the lucky ones. The exception.

He hated himself for letting you hope, but maybe this was his punishment; to be the one left behind, despite everything.

“I’m sorry,” he must have said, or cried, or screamed, because the house repeated it back to him, over and over.

“I’m sorry.”

And then, there was nothing.

anyone else need a tissue?

thank you so much for reading!! if you liked this, please consider leaving a comment or a reblog, or just come scream at me in my inbox. to see the less heartbreaking rest of my writing, check out my masterlist or follow @intrepidacious-fics for update notifications <3

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes x you #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes oneshot #marvel fanfic #mcu fanfic #every dream gone

479 notes · View notes