#probably won't finish tbh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

atlantablack · 1 year

Text

humming with the birds

on ao3 as well

Saturday 8:54 AM: Have a safe flight, Cap. Try to not worry too much about things on this end.

Saturday 9:00 AM: Thanks, Sam. Stay safe. Call if you need me.

——

Sam can’t help but wonder in the days that follow Steve going back to New York, if he hasn’t made a mistake. Signed his life away to an impossible cause. It’s already been six months of chasing dead ends and coming up with nothing but dust and dirt and blood. If the two of them combined couldn’t find the ghost wearing Bucky’s face, then how is Sam supposed to find him all alone?

But in the end, a week into his solo ghost hunting mission, it turns out he needn’t have worried — the ghost finds him.

——

He’s packing his bag, getting ready to follow another lead Natasha’s passed him, when a gun presses itself to the back of his head. He goes very, very still. His knife is strapped to his thigh. His gun on the side table five feet away. Neither doing him a lick of good when the shape of his death has already been pressed into a bullet.

“Turn around. Slowly.” The voice that speaks is low and rough, and despite never hearing Bucky talk he knows without a shadow of a doubt who he’s going to see when he turns around.

Sure enough, when he turns, palms carefully turned to the ceiling he finds Bucky staring at him from underneath the brim of a nondescript tourist hat proclaiming “I love Glasgow”. The lighting is too dim to make out Bucky’s face, eyes lost to the shadows, mouth a thin line that does nothing but leave a chill spinning its way down Sam’s spine.

“I take it you’re not here to apologize for the steering wheel then?” He drawls, meeting Bucky’s eyes over the barrel of the gun.

Bucky shifts, mouth twisting, face tipping into the light for a second just long enough for Sam to catch sight of storm cloud blue eyes. “Stop following me. Rogers went home. You should do the same.”

And Sam can’t help but bark out a laugh at that, disbelieving and furious all at once. “You’ve been tracking us all this time haven’t you?”

The gun doesn’t waver but Bucky smirks, chin dipping like he doesn’t want Sam to see. “Go home, Wilson.”

“You can’t be that oblivious. If I go home Steve will be back out here tomorrow. You gonna break into his room and threaten him too?” He snorts at the very thought. Can’t see any way that scenario ends except with blood. With Steve back in a hospital room.

The thinnest line of tension threads through Bucky’s shoulders, and the gun shoves its way under Sam’s chin, finding purchase in the hollow of his neck. “Don’t worry about it,” Bucky snaps, stepping in closer and grabbing Sam’s wrist in a bruising grip where he’d been inching towards his knife. “Just do as you're told, and go home.”

Now see, if Sam was smart, if he had someone to go home to, if he didn’t swallow danger and come up breathing adrenaline — well maybe he’d listen. Maybe he’d take the easy out Bucky is giving him and go back to DC and tell Steve that he wasn’t going to risk his life chasing a ghost that doesn’t want to be chased. But there’s a gun to his throat, fingers so tight around his wrist that he can feel all the little bones creaking beneath metal fingers, and his pulse is a bullet, is a dying star. An explosion that bursts out of his mouth and spills all over the floor between them when he says—

“Make me.”

Bucky laughs. A dry, rough sound that spreads the room and catches on all the fine hairs standing at attention on the back of Sam’s neck. His brain is screaming, danger. But his heart is screaming, I have teeth too, let’s see whose are sharper.

“I could kill you right here, sweetheart,” Bucky says, still laughing. “Could take you apart until you tell me every secret Rogers has ever whispered to you. What are you going to do about it?”

There’s nothing but sincerity ringing through Bucky’s words. Sam’s death being dangled in front of his face as nothing but an irrelevant move in this chess game he’s unwittingly begun playing. And he should be scared. He knows this. Is scared if his racing heart, his pulse pounding out a war chant in his ears, is anything at all to go by. But the gun is warm against his skin, a threat that presses closer with every thick swallow. The fingers around his wrist are tight enough he’ll have bruises so stark everyone will be able to see the exact shape of Bucky fingers pressed to his skin. And yet. . . he’s not scared. Not in a way that holds weight.

“Go ahead then,” he says softly, pressing closer until he can see every storm cloud gathering in Bucky's eyes. Wets his lips and grabs his knife with his other hand, presses it to the wrist of the hand holding the gun. “If you want me to stop chasing you, then kill me.”

Bucky is silent for a long while, gun never wavering as he searches Sam’s face for something. And if Sam were to examine this too closely, to examine his own motives for being so foolhardy as to call the bluff of an assassin that has been stalking him for months with no one the wiser — well he’d find nothing he cares to think about too closely. Knows that his heart has never stopped carrying death wishes in the shape of Riley’s name, which is to say, that he has never stopped craving flying or falling, one and the same.

“You’re not doing this for him,” Bucky says eventually, stepping back, gun falling to his side. “Who are you doing it for?”

It’s stupid the way he immediately misses Bucky's grip on his wrist. Stupid how he already misses the fading adrenaline. “You seem awful sure of that,” he says evenly.

Bucky shrugs, holsters his gun and tips back and forth on his feet while he considers Sam. “Stop following me, Sam. This is going to be the only warning I give you.”

The jolt of hearing his own name from Bucky's mouth leaves him silent for long enough that Bucky turns to leave, doesn’t even think twice about turning his back to Sam, and he’s flinging the knife in his hand before he can think it through.

Bucky dodges it, of course, stares at the door it’s embedded itself in, and then stalks back across the room to slam Sam into a wall. If Sam were the type of man to pray in his last moment he thinks maybe he’d start praying right now. Bucky’s face is a graveyard, the ghosts of every person to die at his hands thick in the air between them, and Sam has already called his bluff once, shouldn’t have pushed his luck a second time.

He can’t move at all, Bucky’s body a long, hard line against his, keeping him effortlessly held against the wall. The metal fingers around his throat flex once and he swallows convulsively, holds Bucky’s gaze and waits. Can’t do anything but wait. Fancies he can hear a funeral march playing in the distance and wonders how long it’ll take Steve and Natasha to figure out what’s happened to him.

“You’re not going to stop following me,” Bucky says quietly. It’s not a question, but Bucky licks his lips and pauses like he’s waiting for an answer regardless.

“No,” Sam replies softly, tracks Bucky’s throat as he swallows, and then glances back up. “No. I’m not going to stop.”

“I could kill you,” Bucky repeats, a shadow of lost confusion flashing its way across his face. “Go home Sam Wilson. Go back to Delacroix. Or DC. Go home.”

And that. . . that scares him. The clear implication that Bucky knows about Sarah. That leaves frost growing on his tongue. But he still isn’t going to stop. And Bucky still hasn’t killed him. So there’s really only one thing left to say once more—

“If you’re going to kill me, then I’d really rather you get on with it.” He smirks, presses his weight forward best he can, and hisses as Bucky’s grip tightens on his throat. “Otherwise, get the hell out of my room.”

Bucky’s silent for a very long time. The minutes stretching between them and Sam is too warm pressed up against the wall, Bucky’s body one long line of heat. There’s a razor sharp tightrope under his feet and he wants to jump off of it, wants to take the knife out of the door and cut the rope to pieces. Wants to keep pressing forward until Bucky’s body turns into something he can understand, until they’re both just bodies giving and taking.

Sam has always had a thing for walking the edge of too much, for flying too close to the goddamn sun. Has always had a thing for smart men with steady hands and pretty mouths, and fuck if Bucky Barnes doesn’t tick every box Sam’s ever had. He should be praying for his life and instead all he can think about is the way Bucky’s mouth, his goddamn mouth, won’t stop parting all slick with confusion.

“Go on,” Sam hears himself say, voice low, heat snaking through the words. “If you’re gonna kill me, baby, let’s get started. La petite mort.” He’s so warm he thinks he’s going to burn up, and Bucky hasn’t moved an inch, every line of his body pressed against Sam’s is a taunt, a temptation.

Bucky shivers, pupils blown wide, nothing but a thin ring of winter sky left. His hand falls from Sam’s throat and he grins, viciously pleased and presses forward with his full weight until their nose to nose. “I’m not going to stop following you,” he says once more for good measure, laser focused on the way Bucky’s mouth parts trembling.

And in the space of a breath, Bucky’s across the room, wide-eyed with red spots high on his cheeks. He swallows hard, opens his mouth and then shuts it again. Is out the door in a flash, once again nothing but a ghost. Nothing left behind but the bruises blossoming across Sam’s skin.

He stands trembling against the wall for a long time, rolling the entire thing over and over in his mind until it’s sharpened into a point. Thinks once, I wanted to kiss him, and then, I wanted to send him to his fucking knees. Doesn’t know what to do with that. Only knows that it was a bad idea he would have followed through on given one more minute with Bucky pressed against him.

He goes to bed without packing, and when he wakes it’s to a text from Natasha saying to stay right where he is, because — and get this — Bucky has been spotted in Glasgow. What a fucking surprise.

#atlanta's writing #sambucky #sam wilson #bucky barnes #death threats as flirting #because that's a love language right?#fic: humming with the birds #tada #courtesy of - me wanting to throw out pieces of fics that i might never finish #probably won't finish tbh #but i love this part #and i want other people to see it too

12 notes · View notes

jewishcissiekj · 1 year

Text

SW reading list timeeeeeeee

Currently reading-need to finish: -The High Republic: Into the Dark (listening to the audiobook) -Star Wars: Republic (6 issues left) -Canon Star Wars post ANH comics (finished the Vader run, but only 25 issues in with the main one)

Want to read/on my list/reading once I finish the ones I'm currently reading: -Shatterpoint -Dark Times & Other post-ROTS Legends/EU comics (whatever the Purge oneshots are, some of the Vader series that exist, and anything I'll see that intrests me in the Legends media timeline) -The High Republic: A Test of Courage -Queen's Peril -Jedi Trial (if it can be read outside of the other books' context) -The High Republic Adventures vol 1 (there's books inbetween issues god help me) -Canon Star Wars comics from ESB-ROTJ (they're still coming out) -Rest of THR phase 1 books and such -The Cestus Deception (note for Jedi Trial applies here too) -Yoda: Dark Rendezvous (note for Jedi Trial applies here too) -Queen's Hope -Catalyst -Rebel Rising -Darth Vader (2017) & the parts from SW (2015) that are scattered across the timeline

And to watch somewhere somehow somewhen when I finish some of these: -Rogue One (need to read Catalyst & Rebel Rising first) -The Bad Batch (for Hera and for the knowledge mostly)

Meanwhile will be rewatching Rebels nad potentially some of TCW with my little sister (she's watching them for the first time) who doesn't know English so we're watching the dubbed version and I'm gonna be in hell when Thrawn shows up and it's not Lars's voice (probably gonna watch TBB with her, we're also watching Ahsoka as it comes out together it's fun)

#yael is reading star wars #yael is stupid about reading star wars #this is like #so much stuff #didn't quite realize it before #and yeah i'll probably rwatch esb when i finish the canon comics up to it #why do i do this truly #sw #star wars #tbh comics are the easiest parts for me #i read them so fast i eat them up you won't even catch it #but i have no motivation for the 2015 sw run #thr is fun i love what i've read of it #will go back to thist list in a few months and see what's up #hopefully i'll at least finish into the dark by hen lmao

6 notes · View notes