#Soldiers of a Different Cloth Audiobook | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

my-simp-land · 4 years ago

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You Cheeky Slink

Bucky comes to you in the night to tell you about his latest google dive and maybe something more. Bucky x reader fluff. 1508 words. This is highkey self indulgent so get ready to read the fantasy thats been living in my head lately. Thanks :))

“Doll?”

Bucky stands at my door with just his head stuck into my room.

“Bucky, what are you doing? Where’s your shirt? You’re going to catch a cold wandering around with no clothes on,” I mumble from my pillow and plushie covered bed.

He smirks. He always does that smirk when he’s about to give some smartass response. That stupid lopsided smirk with he petal pink lips surrounded by the beard he’s been growing out. It’s kinda gangly but in a good way.

“Well, I guess I’ll have to come in then, so I don’t catch a cold in this freezing hallway. You know, you don't actually catch colds from being co-”

You had to stop the groan from falling past your lips. “Buck, love you and all, but now isn't the time to drop some of your newly found knowledge on me. It's...what time is it? Bucky, it is past midnight. Please tell me why you’re in my room at 12:38 a.m. talking about colds.”

Peter and I have been teaching Bucky how to use the internet and his phone, and We introduced him to Google a few days ago. Ever since then, he’s been catching himself up on most of what has happened in the last 70s years. It’s really heartwarming to see his interest in aerial technology and space exploration. We’re all glad that Bucky is adjusting well, but he’s been bombarding us all with random knowledge he’s found on the internet.

“Well, in all fairness, you were the one that invited me in, angel. I’m just doing what you said.” The smirk again. It’s too dark now that he's standing in my dark room, but I know the smirk. It bleeds into his voice. It makes him sound more...confident. Or cocky. “But dollface, we’ve explored more of space than we have the ocean. We don’t know what all is living in the deep parts of our ocean, but we know that you’ll get spaghettified if you go into a black hole. Some people think black holes are portals and some think they’re dying stars.”

“Wait, what? Buck, where are you getting your info?”

“Google, of course. Can I sit?”

“Sure.” The heavy weight of a giant man and his absurdly heavy metal arm rests on the corner of my bed. He almost seems hesitant to sit. I can immediately feel his warmth through the blanket. Despite me keeping my area freezing, Bucky always stays warm. “But Bucky, you went to a site to read these things. You used google but from there, what did you do?”

I can hear the wheels turning in his head. “Uh...the interesting looking ones?”

“You can’t believe everything you read on the internet, Buck. Anyone can put whatever they want out there. When you’re doing this research you’ve got to use reliable sources.”

“Reliable sources? Can I lean against the wall and stretch my legs?”

“Sure. Friday will help you with that, but Peter and I, and even Dr. Banner could help explain that to you in more detail tomorrow at a reasonable hour.”

Bucky shuffles his way across my bed to rest against the wall. He’s cautious of my legs as he makes his journey. It’s almost like he goes into assassin mode. Even though I know he’s moving, he tries his best not to disturb me.

“Well, did you know the footstep on the moon will likely stay there for at least 100 million years? There’s no wind on the moon, so it can’t be blown away. And did you know space is completely silent? There’s no air, so the sound waves have nothing to travel through so no sound.”

Bucky carries on with his space talk. Not long after we became friends, he shared that as a child he was interested in planes. He wanted to be a pilot growing up. That quickly became an awkward conversation. Now, Bucky is learning to fly with Sam, but once he learned our travels expanded into space, his dreams were out of this world. Bucky would start his google dives asking about some random thing, but without a doubt, he would end up on space exploration. Peter and I want to see how he’d do in a Wikipedia race. Peter thinks he would be amazing at it, but I know he’d get carried away and go down his own rabbit hole.

“Doll, Neptune has storms big enough to swallow the entire Earth! Can I get under the blankets?”

I hummed my approval and rolled over. Bucky’s voice is deep and raspy, and something about it can lull me to sleep. Usually I can’t sleep with any noise but Bucky is different. He could probably do audiobooks. Steve’s school videos and Bucky’s audiobooks. That’s quite a pair.

Bucky carries on with his space dump until I ask him. “Bucky, Russia got a satellite in space first. Sputnik. Would you have had anything to do about it? Idk. That might be a rough question but…”

He thinks, and he thinks hard. I can imagine his brows would come together, and he would bite at the right side of his lower lip. His Neptune blue eyes would move like he’s reading words off an invisible piece of paper laid before him. He would usually run his fingers through his hair, but Sam mentioned hair loss and that made Buck a little self conscious. I told him not to worry, but I’ll catch him catching himself.

“I’m not sure, angel. I don’t remember anything being about space, but maybe i just didn’t know it was about the space race. That is bizarre though. I was around when we made it to the moon, but I wasn’t. Can I get under the blankets?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Buck starts to talk again as he pulls the blankets over himself. He worms his legs undermine. “Bucky, get your popsicle legs off me. Go put those things on Steve.”

He lets out a small laugh before he continues his ted talk of everything. Bucky has been taken with space, but he’s interested in cooking too. He loves to sit and watch The Great British Bake-Off or MasterChef or Top Chef. It was quite sweet and funny when he tried to recreate one of the meat pies from season two of TGBBO. He was so confident, and his bottom was so soggy.

“We should grow a fruit salad tree. We’ve got to do something to a fruit tree, but we’d be able to make it grow up to 6 fruits! You could have peaches, Steve gets apples, Sam gets...I don’t know, and I get plums. We’d have to think of something for Pete. But imagine it, a huge fruit salad tree orchard behind the compound!”

“If it’s an orchard, why don’t we just plant a whole bunch of different trees?”

“Bragging rights. Can I lean on these pillows? I’m just gonna lean here.”

“Sure Buckbeak.”

“Hmph. Us having a fruit salad tree would be like the animals in Harry Potter.”

“Yeah?”

Bucky carries on, but his closeness and warmth are enough to lull me to sleep.

I woke up not too much later. Bucky has slowly made his way to fully laying between me and my pillow mountain. He’s pulled me in close to him and nuzzles his face into my neck. He somehow got his arms fully around me with my noticing. Our legs are intertwined, and thankfully, Bucky’s feet have warmed up. I can hear his heart beat in this position. Despite the torture and darkness he’s witness, his heart still beats like a young bird’s wings. His body and mind is old, but his heart is young. A young man from the 40s thrust into the 21st century. It is a cruel fate, but I know Bucky is strong enough to carry this burden. A heart is a heavy burden to carry.

I wake with the sun; a curious beam has made its way directly into my eyes. I go to grab a pillow to cover my face, but I seem to be in the death grip of a certain super soldier. I’m able to shimmy my way around to look at him. He looks at peace. Bucky always carries his anxieties and burdens, but in this moment, he looks youthful. He isn’t a super soldier who lost himself for 70 years. He isn’t a man who is widely hated and has to redeem himself. He isn’t a man with blood on his hands. He’s just Bucky; a great guy that will hold you when you cry or share a big bellied laugh with you.

“See something you like, dollface?”

“You slithered your slinky way into my bed.”

“No, no, no. You invited me in, so I wouldn't catch a cold. I just made myself not cold.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. You were obviously the best solution, cuddle bug. Your heart is so full of love and compassion that it’s gone hot.”

“You’re a big sap.”

“Only for my best girl.”

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #fatws bucky #bucky fic #bucky x you #bucky imagine #marvel #sebastian stan #fluff #fanfic #bucky barns fanfiction

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outofthisworldreviews-blog · 8 years ago

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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Rating

Review

*** This review originally appeared on Out of this World Reviews. ***

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is perhaps the most well known and popular of classics written by Washington Irving. The story’s enduring popularity no doubt has much to do with the tale’s terrifying villain, the Headless Horseman, whose status as an undead Hessian soldier gallivanting about the countryside sans his head has made it a classic Halloween tale for all ages. There are many editions of the story available, from the plain ol’ text edition found on Gutenberg’s web site as a free read to illustrated ones sold by your favorite online retailer. This review pertains to the Audible audiobook edition narrated by Tom Mison, who ironically played the main character, Ichabod Crane, in the Fox television series, Sleepy Hollow.

Written in 1820 while Washington was living abroad in Birmingham, England, the story takes place outside Tarrytown, New York, in a glen known as Sleepy Hollow. Our hero, Ichabod Crane, an unassuming school teacher, is introduced to the reader as a “worthy wight” and further described as such:

He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

Crane is not that different from you or I. He is a contribution member of his community, acting as schoolmaster and music instructor; has dreams of success, which are perhaps exacerbated when he meets Katrina Van Tassel and wonders over the life they might have together (or, rather, the lands and other assets he will inherit as a result of such a union); and he possesses a healthy interest in the fantastic:

His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather’s direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes.

Much of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow revolves around Crane’s pursuit of Katrina and the many obstacles standing in the way of his taking her hand in marriage. The entire audiobook runs about 1 1/2 hours; it isn’t until the last 22 minutes or so that the reader receives the full measure of Sleepy Hollow:

There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed orth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel’s, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major Andre was taken, and which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard.

It should come as no surprise that Ichabod Crane finds himself alone at night traversing the same area the Headless Horseman frequents. A chase ensues, and while we know the Headless Horseman proves too much for our gangly hero, Ichabod’s exact fate remains a mystery. All we know for sure is that he is never heard from nor seen again, though those passing his now deserted schoolhouse sometimes claim they can hear “his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.”

Enough cannot be said for the narration of Tom Mison, whose voice with its captivating eloquence and English accent is a treat for the ears. His having played the role of Ichabod Crane in the Sleepy Hollow television series aside, he is the perfect narrator for this story, as he captures the time period and the story’s classic language superbly. As for the author himself, Washington demonstrates a mastery of the written word that somehow retains a high level of eloquence while remaining very readable despite the year the story was written.

If I were to have any complaint about this classic story is that it takes far too long to get to the real attraction: the Headless Horseman. That aside, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a classic read made even more so during the spookiness of Halloween. I give it four rockets and a recommendation for you to give it a read or a listen.

#audiobook review #the legend of sleepy hollow #washington irving #tom mison #four rockets #halloween #holiday theme

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