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offside-the-lines · 10 months

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tell me who i run to (if not you) | anthony beauvillier | Ep 2. Winter

This is a completed series! Read Full Fic | 🧸 Series Cover Page/Masterlist 🧁 | 🎵 Playlist 🎶 << Previous Episode || Ep 2 || Next Episode >>

Chapter Summary: Tito injures his wrist in the first game of 2024, he’s out for 6-8 weeks and then his car breaks down. He thinks maybe he’s cursed. Evie becomes a shoulder to lean on. Barzy gets suspicious.

A/N: You can refer to cover page for the series summary, author's notes, tropes, general warnings and other fun tidbits. This series contains mature themes. Minors DNI. Disclaimer: This series is set in Chicago but does not mention the name of the team.

Word count: 4.4k // 44.5k

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I. Winter

Evie — December 31

In the past few days, her text chain with Tito has settled into a nice rhythm. At first, it was a couple of texts a day: when one of them saw a funny Instagram post or reel, they would send it to the other.

Things changed on Friday when she broke her usual routine of curling up on her couch with a blanket and book and instead found herself watching Tito's game. Her book lay untouched in her lap as her eyes tracked number 91 across the ice. After the game, she stayed up later than she meant to, eagerly picking up her phone every time it vibrated with a new text from Tito.

So, she concluded, I watch hockey now.

Which is why Evie ends up being late for the New Year’s party that Kelsey had invited her to. She couldn’t bear to leave when she had planned to, watching as the score kept ratcheting up for the wrong team. Her stomach curled every time Tito’s frustrated face is shown.

To Tito 🌞🏒: i’m sorry about the loss, tito. fucking sucks. i hope you’ll still try to enjoy your new year’s eve?

By the time she gets to the party, she’s glad she can slip in among the partygoers without much fuss; everyone’s already a little tipsy on champagne. She knows she keeps pulling out her phone to check her notifications, but she can only hope she doesn't seem too rude.

It’s almost 11:30 pm when her phone buzzes, and she’s surprised to see it’s an incoming call and not a text. She slips out to the balcony as she connects the call.

Tito’s voice comes through too loud, “Evie!”

She laughs, “Hi, Tito. You good?”

“Yeah, you said I should enjoy my New Year’s Eve, so I went out with some of the guys,” he says, his words slurring ever so slightly. Evie can hear the background noise dim through the phone as if he had also stepped outside.

“New Year’s Eve in Dallas; you living it up?”

He laughs, “Dickie’s taken us to some fancy bar he used to go to. There’s a bunch of the Stars guys here too. Not that I really want to see them right now,” he groans.

“God, yeah. I saw, I’m sorry. That was a rough way to end the year.”

“Yeah, well…” He clears his throat and tries to inject some levity into his voice, “I don’t want to think about that right now. We’re trying to have fun, right? What're you up to?”

“Kelsey— my coworker— she’s also friends with Leanne— she invited me to a party. I’m at someone’s penthouse apartment. I have no idea whose. It’s pretty cool, though— Great view. There’s a lot of people, actually.”

Tito whistles. “A lot of choices for a midnight kiss then, eh?”

“I guess?” she laughs. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Not that much,” he says unconvincingly. Evie can picture him scrunching his face at his own blatant lie.

“Okay,” she laughs, “I’ll have to let you go back then. Get some more champagne in you.”

“Nah,” he whines a little. “No midnight kisses in there. Fuck! I’m going to be even more unlucky next year if I don’t get a kiss.”

It startles a laugh out of her. “Anthony, buddy, I don’t think that’s a thing,” she chuckles, shaking her head.

He hums and doesn’t say anything else.

“Are you making friends at least?” she asks.

“Eh… more like passing time. A party’s a party, right?”

“Come on, I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“They’re not!” he says a little too loud before repeating himself, “They’re not bad. That isn't what I meant. I just… I don’t know. I don’t really know if we’re friends, so much, just teammates.”

Evie softens. “Jason and Alandra were nice. They seemed to be trying to be your friend, at least. I bet he had to drag you out tonight.”

“Yeah, he’s cool. It’s just—” He groans. “I think we’re both a little too drunk to try to figure out the difference between a buddy in the league who I’ll spend a couple of months playing with and will almost never talk to again and a friend.”

Leanne catches her eye through the glass and raises an eyebrow in question. Evie sends a small smile back.

“It’s tough, Tito, to move around. I’m sorry this year has been so fucked for you as well.” She sighs. “Listen, I gotta get back inside. Leanne's making weird faces at me. And you should go back inside, too.”

She hears Tito suck in a shallow breath, voice once again full of false cheer, “Of course, of course. Shit, sorry for being a fucking downer. I promise I’ll go back inside and have a good time.”

“Have fun, dude. You’re a hot professional athlete at a fancy bar on New Year’s Eve. I think you’re not going to have any trouble finding someone to kiss at midnight.”

“You think I’m hot?” his voice genuinely lightens; she could hear the smile lighting up his face.

“Goodnight, Tito,” she laughs pointedly, “Happy New Year.”

She hears him finally let out another genuine laugh, a sound that warms her despite the cold Chicago air, “Happy New Year, Evie. I’m really glad we reconnected last week. It’s nice to have a friend in the city.”

And with that, they hang up, and she slips back into the throng of party-goers. She doesn’t get far before Leanne catches her elbow.

“What was that?” Leanne asks, handing over a new champagne glass.

“Oh. It was Tito.”

Leanne’s eyebrows immediately jump. “Oh yeah? You guys are calling now?”

“I mean, I guess? That’s the first time we’ve called so,” she shrugs.

“Mhmm,” Leanne hums, clearly unconvinced, a smirk lacing her lips.

Evie bumps her shoulder. “Oh, shut up. His team just lost 8-1 on New Year’s Eve. It fucking sucked. Cut him some slack.”

“Yikes. Okay, in the spirit of the season, I’ll let it slide just this once.”

Evie laughs and rolls her eyes, letting herself relax into the drink and the rhythm of the people celebrating around her.

Evie — January 2

To Tito 🌞🏒: shit, just saw the hit. are you okay?!!

Evie sits on her couch and stares at her silent phone, her knee bouncing. She hasn’t been able to sit still since she saw the hit, and it just got worse with each replay, so she turned her TV off. But now, she's just sitting in unsettling silence— I’m not entirely sure that this is better.

She checks her phone again. It has been 15 minutes since she watched Tito skate himself off the ice, clutching his left arm. She calms herself with the thought that his silence doesn’t mean there’s something very wrong; if they were running tests, it might just take a while before he sees his phone.

She decides to make a cup of tea and pick up her book again. It makes her feel a little settled, but not enough, as she’s still checking her phone every few seconds. If she’s honest, she's just reading the same page over and over.

Finally, an hour later, her phone lights up, and she picks it up so fast it almost flies out of her hand.

Tito 🌞🏒: doc says it’s probably broken. they’ve immobilized it but i have to come home for more tests.

“Shit,” she says to her empty apartment, hitting Dial on her phone. She fiddles with a loose thread on her shorts as the call tone rings before she finally hears the click of Tito picking up.

“Tito,” she says too loud, leaping up from her couch. Her book crashes to the floor, startling her; she sits back down in embarrassment.

“Hey,” his voice sounds tired.

“Hey,” she responds, voice gentler, “Shit, I’m so sorry about your wrist, Tito.”

He sighs, “Yeah. It was so fucking stupid. I shouldn’t’ve had my hand like that there.”

“Hey! Dude, no. This is not your fault. And maybe it’s not the other guy's fault, either. But it’s definitely not your fault. How many times have you done the exact same thing and not been hurt? It’s not your fault.”

Tito’s silent for a bit; she listens to the jagged ins and outs of this breath. Eventually, with a voice so quiet, she’s only able to hear him due to the utter silence in her apartment: “Yeah, I guess. Thanks.”

She feels a lump form in her throat and tries to clear it away. “You said they’re sending you home?”

“Yeah. It’s definitely broken, so I won’t be playing for a while. It’s probably too late for a flight tonight, so I’m probably going to be on an early one tomorrow.”

They're both silent for a moment, letting that hang in the air.

“Can I pick you up from the airport?”

“You really don’t have to do that. The team’ll pay for a Lyft.”

“Are you going to be on pain meds?”

“Yeah. I’m already feeling it, to be honest,” Tito says with a light laugh.

“Are they sending you back alone?”

“Yeah, it isn't a concussion, so I don’t need supervision.”

“Okay. Then, I would like to pick you up if that’s okay.”

“I—” He pauses for a long time, breaths getting heavier. When he continues talking, his voice comes through thick, “I really don’t want to put you out, but if you’re offering, I would really like that.”

“Well, I'm offering, so I’ll see you tomorrow. Text me the deets?”

“Yeah.” She feels something in her chest loosen. “And Evie?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

She chuckles, “No problem. Text me. And try to have a good sleep.”

“You too,” he whispers, pausing before hanging up.

Putting her phone down on the coffee table, she lets out a shaky breath.

Evie — January 3

“Are you sure you want me to drop you off at yours?” Evie asks, looking over to Tito in her passenger seat. His curls poke out under the hood of his sweater, and his skin looks pale and clammy. His usually bright blue eyes are dulled, shadowy smudges betraying his lack of sleep.

He sends her a soft smile before closing his eyes and leaning back against the headrest. “Yes, please.” His voice sounded as tired as he looked.

“Okay.”

Evie reaches over and gives his good hand a light squeeze before pulling away from the airport. She keeps the drive to his apartment quiet, and she's surprised that she feels less tense than on her drive to O’Hare despite the silence.

Every so often, she peeks over at Tito, cradling his wrist, eyes closed, and face carefully neutral. She doesn’t feel good about leaving him alone in his apartment, but she also knows that they haven’t known each other long enough for her to insist.

Half an hour later, she pulls into the entrance of a very fancy-looking apartment building in the center of Downtown Chicago. The doorman helps them unload Tito’s suitcase and drags it into the lobby for him.

Too soon, they're left standing at the curb.

“Thank you so much,” Tito says, his tired eyes warming a little as he regards her.

“It’s absolutely no problem. Please let me know if you need any help, okay? I make my own hours and work from home for a reason. Call me anytime.”

His smile broadens. “Seriously, Evie. Thank you. You didn’t have to come get me.”

“I know. I wanted to.”

Tito leans in for a hug that Evie reciprocates, careful to avoid his broken hand. They stay connected for a few seconds longer than normal, but neither complains.

“Alright, I’ll leave you be then,” Evie says after they disconnect, stepping into her car with a nod.

Tito remains at the curb, one hand in a sling, the other reaching up for a wave as she pulls away. His figure stays in her rearview until she turns the corner.

Tito — January 11

The days that follow the injury become monotonous quickly. Tito wakes up. He does his morning routine. He takes his pain meds. He rides with Foligno and Bedard into the training facility. He gets poked at by some doctors and told to not do anything with his hand. He rides the bike by himself while everyone else gets to skate. He avoids Bedsy angrily pouting in the hallways; not his rookie, not his problem. He goes home and sits on his couch, just clicking play on whatever comes up on Netflix. He eats his microwavable frozen meal plan. He watches the team drop three of four games. He sleeps.

Rinse and repeat.

It has only been a week, and he's close to losing his mind already. The only bright spots are his ongoing text conversation with Evie, and his daily FaceTime calls with Barz. The boxes still sit unopened in the corner; well, at least he has a good excuse now.

Today was meant to be a break in the monotony. While the team is on a short road trip, Tito’s schedule is a little different. No one ever talks about how uncomfortable it is to drive with a broken wrist. The facility is only 15 minutes away, so he figures that he’ll go in to see the trainers and maybe do some grocery shopping afterward.

The plan was going quite well until he noticed that he had a flat tire on his way to the grocery store.

He pulls over to the side of the road and just sits there for a minute, fighting the urge to cry. He rests his forehead on the steering wheel, letting out a small scream before he gets out to assess the damage. He mutters a few choice swears when he eventually finds the big nail in his tire.

He pulls out his phone and texts Evie while he returns to the driver's seat.

To evie 🧁: i told you my year would be unlucky [attachment: photo of his flat tire]

He starts looking for the roadside assistance card, but since it's a new rental, he’s still frustratedly fumbling around when his phone rings.

“Hello?” he answers, not even looking at his phone.

“Tito, what’s going on?”

He pauses his rustling, surprised to hear Evie’s warm voice pouring through the sound system. The familiarity of the French immediately relaxes him. He sighs.

“Oh, um. I was driving to the store. And I just realized the tire was flat. I think the hole has been there for a while, but because of the wrist and stuff, I hadn’t driven since before the roadie.”

“Shit. That’s annoying. Where are you? You wanna drop me a pin or something. I can help you change your tire; you definitely can’t do it with a broken wrist.”

He pauses, surprised by the offer. “Oh! Um… I was just going to call roadside assistance. If I can just find the card…”

“Don’t be stupid. That’s gonna take ages. If you’re close by, I can come help.”

“Um… Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she huffs, “I could use a break from the computer anyway. I’ll grab my coat and keys.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. I’m probably not far away because I just left the training center like 5 minutes ago.”

“Sweet, no problem. Drop me a pin, and I’ll be right there.”

In less than 10 minutes, Evie is stepping out of her car in her wool coat, leather gloves, and an oversized winter scarf that cocoons her up to her nose. She smiles and waves as she jogs over to give him a tight hug. Whatever tension was left in his body from the long week drains from his body as her arms wrap tightly around him.

They remain connected for a few seconds, his face buried in the mess of scarf and hair around her neck; her perfume fills his lungs with warmth despite the cold Chicago winter air.

“Thanks again for coming.”

“Stop thanking me. My god.” She exaggeratedly rolls her eyes as they finally separate. She starts getting all the tools as she says, “I want to help the city’s best winger. It’s a public service. I’ll forward the bill to the owner. Or maybe even the mayor.”

It startles a laugh out of him, relaxed by her light-heartedness. He realizes that he has been kind of down recently, only leaving his apartment for meetings with trainers.

“Well, I hope you’ll charge them a fair rate, considering the express service surcharge. You did get here very quickly.”

She nods mock-sternly, “Yes, of course.”

With all the necessary tools laid out next to her, she bends down to begin jacking up the car. He fishes out his snow jacket from the trunk and hands it to her.

“Here. So you don’t have to kneel on the ground.”

She smiles up at him from where she’s knelt, “Thanks.”

The rest of the tire change happens in silence; Tito’s content to let her focus on what she’s doing. He watches intently and doesn't want to acknowledge his embarrassment that, at 26 years old, he still doesn't know how to change a tire.

As she’s working, it starts to snow lightly. The flakes stand out against her glossy coffee-dark hair that has fallen to curtain her face, and Tito resists the urge to brush it back so she can see better in the overcast dimness. He stuffs his hands in his pockets to have something to do with them.

When she’s done a short while later, she spins around, still kneeling, beaming up at him with pride as she sings, “Voila!”

At that moment, as she sparkles up at him, their eyes meet, and a snowflake catches on her eyelashes. It hits him square in the chest; this might be the most stunning thing he’s ever seen. The realization knocks into him so unexpectedly that he has to fight through the tightness in his throat to exclaim back in excitement.

“Awesome!” he strains.

“Yep!” Her voice is bright and melodic as she turns back to lower the car. “It’s all done. You’re going to need to get this tire patched or something at a shop, though, and—”

She continues to explain some important details that are totally lost on him as he tries to quash the twisting of his guts. She is indeed beautiful, engaging, and scarily competent, but none of that matters.

None of that matters because his stay in Chicago is temporary. So he takes that feeling and shoves it down deep. But, he hopes that a transient athlete who is, as it turns out, not very good at his job will adequately fulfill the role of Good Friend.

Being a good friend is something he can do.

Being a good friend is something he’s good at.

“— groceries for dinner, if you want?”

He tunes back in just in time to catch the end of what she's saying. Maybe he should also retract the previous statement about being a good friend.

“Um, I’m sorry. I’m feeling kinda out of it. What was the question?”

She laughs and squeezes his elbow sympathetically. “Tito, it’s okay. You’re kinda pale right now. Like, you look like you’re gonna be sick. Look, I know you said you were going to the grocery store, but I really don’t think you should be driving and stuff right now. I’ve got plenty of food at mine. I was probably going to cook pasta or something tonight. Just come over and hang out? It’ll make me feel better.”

He mulls it over, and the dull throbbing in his wrist convinces him to nod. It does sound much better than what he had been doing this past week.

So they do just that. Tito isn't complaining: not about the delicious home-cooked meal or watching B99 again. He didn’t realize he was waiting to watch it with her. They find themselves pausing the show numerous times just to chat about something the show brings up: a memory from childhood, something from her life in Toronto or his life in New York, or just a passionate opinion that they have.

He's burrowed deep into the opposite end of her couch with the latest cup of tea she has made him, feeling more at home than he has in over a month when he discovers the time is so much later than he thought.

“Oh crap, it’s past 10 pm. I really should get going,” Tito says, finally sitting up.

“Shit, I didn’t even see that,” she laughs. Evie looks out the window. “You know. It’s really late, you’re on pain meds, and the roads look kinda slippery with the new snow. Why don’t you just stay here? This couch actually has a really comfy pull-out bed— my brother Will said so anyway when he visited.”

“Oh,” he pauses, comfortable and heavy-limbed but uncertain, “I don’t really have anything with me.”

“That should be okay. I’ve got a bunch of extra toiletries and some of Brandy and Will’s clothes.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, if that’s really okay with you, I’d love to not have to drive home with my wrist. It sucks.”

“Of course,” she smiles, reaching over and squeezing his knee before standing up and walking into her bedroom.

He figures he should help, so he moves the warm fuzzy blanket she had over her legs and the throw pillows to the corner of the room. He clears the tea mugs that litter the coffee table before pushing it back. He’s inspecting the couch for the pull-out function when Evie returns with a small pile of sheets and clothes and a few pillows.

“Oh, thanks for clearing the space!” She smiles at him brightly. “So, I found you a T-shirt and some sweatpants. There are spare toiletries under the sink.”

“Thanks. You’re truly the best.”

“You are so right,” she winks, laughing softly.

They put together the couch-bed in tandem, and both take turns getting ready for sleep. Eventually, Evie, in her pajamas, bids him goodnight warmly before shutting her bedroom door, and he's left lying on the pull-out bed looking around at the living room, lit only by the city lights streaming through with big windows.

Tito — January 19

“Wait, so you’re telling me you’ve been replacing me with this girl, and you haven’t even bothered to introduce us?”

“Okay, Barz, that’s a little dramatic. I have not been replacing you.” Tito desperately pleads with his eyes for Mat to stop talking so loud in this somewhat nice Italian restaurant he and Evie had discovered a few nights ago.

“No, seriously. Why didn’t you invite her? You should invite her. You know what? I’ll do it. Hand me your phone—” Mat makes a desperate grab for Tito’s phone that was sitting face down on the table.

Tito puts his hand on it and whispers. “Dude, stop it. I’d like to come back here again sometime. The food’s actually so good.”

Mat grins and wiggles his eyebrows, “Oooh, come back here again, like on a date with Evie?” he says, dragging out her name in a suggestive tone.

“No, Barz. Not a date. We’ve been over this. We’re just hanging out- like you and me. We’re friends. That’s it. Neither of us even wants to date right now anyway.”

“Okay, bud. If you say so.” Mat rolls his eyes while taking a sip of his wine. “So, you’re saying if you were both open to dating, you’d be interested.”

“No— Well—” Tito pauses and sighs. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it. And it’s not what’s happening, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, come on, Beau. I’ve known you for ages, dude. There is no way— you’re telling me that you’ve seen her almost every single day, for most of the day, this whole month, and you haven’t even thought about it?”

Tito sighs pointedly, clenching his jaw. “Yes. I haven’t thought about it. Because there’s nothing to think about. We text. We hang out. We watch TV and eat food. We—” He cuts himself off abruptly. He knows if he mentions the sleepovers, even though he's always on the pull-out couch, Mat will take it the wrong way. “Look, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I get to see you, like, twice during the season. I want to hear all your dumb stories.”

Mat eyes him skeptically but eventually relents. “My stories aren’t dumb. But okay. So, last week…” he excitedly recounts.

The night returns to a familiar rhythm. He misses this: the easy conversation with a guy who’s known you for ten years. There are no awkward lulls or having to explain a joke or backstory. It’s just comfortable, and it feels like home: a warmth burrowed deep in his chest.

There’s a gaping vacancy that gnaws at him later when he’s lying in his own bed, unable to sleep. It’s almost as if Mat took that feeling of home with him when he gave him a lingering hug goodbye, squeezing Tito so hard it hurt a little.

He stares at the ceiling and thinks about how his favorite sleep shirt— one of his early Islanders t-shirts with a 72 on it— was still at Evie’s apartment. He also thinks about the hoodie that he left there.

The team's about to head on an extended roadie while he remains behind, doing not much. He hates it when he’s the one left behind watching the team play without him. That’s the thing with professional sports. You’re around a team all day, every day, for most of the year. You know everything about everyone. You’re almost never alone. Which makes it all the more stark when you’re with a new group of faces. Or when you’re suddenly stuck at home, injured, and alone.

He leans over and picks up his phone, the sudden brightness of the screen making him squint.

To evie 🧁 : hey, so on second thought, if the offer still stands, i’d like to stay over this week? totally okay if you changed your mind. just figured it’d be nice to have some company, and you’re much closer to the rink. To evie 🧁: and you still have my favorite hoodie. i want it back.

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dustedmagazine · 27 days

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Dust, Volume 10, Number 8

Orcas (not Oasis)

Welcome to our all-Oasis edition of Dust!

Just kidding. We slog through August bemused by the excitement over big ticket tours, though we will, if pressed, admit to a fondness for “Wonderwall,” a song often sung jubiliantly by someone we love on the way to track meets and XC ski practice and theater rehearsal years ago (though not as many years ago as it first emerged).

Anyway, we once again trawl the slush pile for the good stuff, opine briefly on its merits and share it with you. We’re sure you’ll find out what the Gallagher brothers are up to from other sources.

This month’s contributors included Bryon Hayes, Ian Mathers, Jonathan Shaw, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Mason Jones and Christian Carey.

Ark Zead — Niptaktuk (Glacial Movements)

The Italian label Glacial Movements specializes in music that’s chilled, immense and slow, just like its namesake. Niptaktuk continues this icy throughline, offering a series of highly resonant, frost-tinged drone passages. The creator, of which no information is known, sourced these textures from gongs and singing bowls, stretching the frequencies into lengthy, subtly shifting tone clouds. They cleverly balance lighter shades against darker hues, layering pre-dawn shimmer over sub-sonic bass pulses. The delicate patter of scraped and stroked metal adds a sense of the real to these otherwise uncanny soundscapes. Ark Zead drew influence from the cold northern Canadian winter when they created these sounds, yet the experience of listening doesn’t evoke frostbite or blinding blizzards. Instead Niptaktuk, which is an Inuit word that implies oncoming clear skies, is a remedy against frostiness, a kernel of warmth that seeks to melt the winter ice.

Bryon Hayes

The Body & Dis Fig — Orchards of a Futile Heaven (Thrill Jockey)

At this point, at least going by actual releases, surely there are no greater collaborators in heavy music (in all its forms) than The Body. In addition to their stellar work as “just” a duo, Chip King and Lee Buford have at this point collaborated with a real murderers’ row of bands and artists, and those albums absolutely refuse to stick to any particular formula. That they’d work with Dis Fig (aka Felicia Chen), who’s made an excellent, emotionally/sonically challenging record called Purge and sang on a full length by The Bug, makes perfect sense. The result, as with many “The Body &” LPs, is so seamlessly satisfying you’d think this was everyone involved’s main gig. The thunderous drums, harsh noise, and King’s peerless shrieks are all present, and Chen gives a hell of a lead vocal performance to centre it all. The closing one-two punch of “Coils of Kaa”/“Back to the Water” is one of the best endings any 2024 is going to get, Chen wailing in rage and despair as the music collapses buildings around her.

Ian Mathers

Demiser — Slave to the Scythe (Blacklight Media/Metal Blade)

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Retrograde throwback thrash isn’t exactly a growth area in metal, or a particularly enlightened undertaking, culturally speaking. But dudes in denim and bullet-lined bandoliers don’t make records like Slave to the Scythe because they foresee mass-market opportunity or stadiums full of fans in the immediate future. Mostly they don’t see much future at all. Demiser seems to share those perspectives — live fast, die faster, have as much fun as possible in the brief and weird interregnum. Is Slave to the Scythe fun? Depends on your sense of humor, and your tolerance for metal’s more reductive shenanigans. The fellows in the band have given themselves stage names like Gravepisser (he plays guitar) and Infestor (he drums), and they have supplied us with the sublime song title “Hell Is Full of Fire”; no points for innovation, but maximum points for unconquerably up-for-it idiocy. Motörhead seems as significant to Demiser as early Exodus and Kreator (especially the genius of Pleasure to Kill). Sort of nice to hear a thrash record that’s more interested in the riffs than the solos. Sort of fun to play this record really, really loud. Sort of certain that doing so results in becoming materially stupider. That’s okay — it makes that aforementioned lack of a viable future a little less awful to contemplate.

Jonathan Shaw

Dummy — Free Energy (Trouble In Mind)

Dummy’s debut, Mandatory Enjoyment, lived up to its title; it was a record difficult not to appreciate. In her Dusted review, Jennifer Kelly praised it as “a listening experience that simultaneously braces and soothes, agitates and lulls.” Dummy’s second album, Free Energy,has a similar appeal, but knocks this listener off balance with its bizarre fixation on dated drum machines and backwards sounds that bring to mind the baggy indie-dance of the 1990s. You know the stuff: Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Jesus Jones, Pop Will Eat Itself. There are some great songs here, such as “Nine Clean Nails,” but you have dig around amongst the misfires to find them. Dummy still have an ear for a good tune, so you can forgive their more questionable aesthetic decision-making.

Tim Clarke

“Father” John Misty — Greatish Hits: I Followed My Dreams and My Dreams Said to Crawl (Sub Pop)

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With streaming supplying abundant amounts of playlists, one might reasonably ask why a greatest hits compilation would be useful. Curation instead of algorithms. “Father” John Misty’s Greatish Hits presents the high points in his catalog, beginning with early songs“Real Love Baby” (2016) and “Nancy from Now On” (2012). It is by no means a chronological survey, nor is it front-loaded like so many collections and playlists. The popular “I Love You Honeybear” (2015) is saved for the penultimate track. The finale, “I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All,” is new. At eight and a half minutes long, it stretches out with saxophone, bongo, and electric piano solos interspersing bluesy pop vocals. Worth the wait - don’t skip ahead!

Christian Carey

Ben Felton A Lot (Island House)

Ben Felton lets the drones linger, layering sounds on top of sounds, like primary-toned transparencies on an overhead projector. You can spend this album watching the colors these tones make when the light shines through them, hitting one, two, three or more guitar/synth textures before getting to the other side. Complex yes, but peaceful, drowsy almost. One track called “A Foghorn or a Loudspeaker,” sounds like just that, an uneasy truce between natural serenity and amplified buzz and hiss. The space it lives in is large and echoey, a cathedral or, more likely, a vast underground cavern with water lapping at the walls. Occasionally, the electronic mode predominates as in the airy percolation of “What You Need.” Yet though the blippy motif is bright and uncorroded, it sits atop a woozy soup of tone; guitar notes crash in sporadically intimating a rustier, more industrial territory nearby. Felton comes from New York but now resides in more bucolic Carrboro, North Carolina. His soundscapes find a meeting place between folk-adjacent ambience and rougher, noisier music. The album gets more propulsive as it goes. Shaken-not-stirred “The Fifth Day,” turns a three-note upward lilting motif into something approaching rock anthemry. You can’t blame the sustained notes for hanging around. It’s nice here, and you want to stay.

Jennifer Kelly

Margarida Garcia And Manuel Mota—Domestic Scene (Feeding Tube)

Upright electric bassist Margarida Garcia and electric guitarist Manuel Mota are part of Lisbon, Portugal’s experimental/improvisational music scene and have worked together with and without the participation of others on seven records besides Domestic Scene over the past decade. It is their first LP to be released in the USA, and there’s something poetic about that fact, because it feels like an echo of the work of one American musician — Loren Connors, and more specifically, 21st century Connors in solo mode. It shares his sparseness, boiled-down lyricism and willingness to disappear into a haze of noise. Since Garcia has associated with him at times, there’s definitely a shared aesthetic. However, these are not young copycats. Mota’s spare progressions proceed according to a different logic, purged of blues and baroque elements, guided by a north star of sequential consonance that adds up to quiet dissonance. And Garcia’s subdued, bow-born cries have an ability to compound, making the music thick with atmosphere, but still stingy with note counts. Play it late.

Bill Meyer

Geneva Jacuzzi — Triple Fire (Dais)

Geneva has been making bedroom synth pop for years. On Triple Fire (named after her astrological sign), the production values tick upward, and several of the songs are club ready. “Laps of Luxury” is a case in point, with Geneva’s dulcet singing abetted by backing vocals, early digital synth sonics, and mechanized beats. “Scena Ballerina” recalls her early bedroom pop, with a taut riff and harmonic swerves. Trebly synths and out of the box percussion underscore an emotive vocal on “Take it or Leave it.” Geneva’s speechsong in “Art is Dangerous” and “Speed of Light” recalls Laurie Anderson’s 1980s work, while “Heart of Poison” has an art rock ambience that incorporates tenor saxophone and is rife with shimmering synths. “Rock and a Hard Place” is an aggressive example of dark wave electronica. The closer, “Yo-yo Boy” is an anthemic piece of minimal synth-pop that reminds listeners of Geneva’s roots while presenting memorable tunefulness.

Christian Carey

Katatonic Silentio — Axis Of Light (Midnight Shift)

Axis Of Light by Katatonic Silentio

Italy-based Mariachiara Troianiello is a long-time DJ, and independent audio and ethnomusicology researcher at the University of San Marino. She also creates electronic music under the name Katatonic Silentio, and on Axis of Light explores a spatial dub, filled with palpating beats and flickering synthesizer sounds. The five tracks on this EP are all based on rhythmic frameworks that skitter and thud with a dark, night-time vibe for the most part. As the title indicates, opener “Drip in the Cave” is indeed subterranean in nature, with rubbery pads and liquid drums reverberating in tactile space. “Bridging the Gap” is lighter and bouncier, bubbling at a fast tempo and filled with electronic hoots and blips. The other pieces mix slow with fast, and machine-like rhythms with heartbeat-like pulses, all swirling in a warehouse ambience populated by ghostly static, quiet bells, or spooky, whistling tones. It’s all a neat combination of machine world and organic atmosphere, like a science-fiction world populated by real, messy people.

Mason Jones

Nicole Marxen — Thorns (Self-Release)

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Nicole Marxen puts an eerie shimmer over rough crescendos of metallic noise, keening in the ghostliest, most disembodied way amidst vibrating slabs of guitar sound. “Thorns,” the album’s spiritual center, floats a chilly line of vocal melody—think Beth Gibbons or Chelsea Wolfe—over a machine-like industrial beat. Fragility blooms in an apocalyptic afterworld. “The Executioner” is heavier, more ominous, slithering to life out of the flickering buzz of downed powerlines. A stolid march emerges soon, swaggering with drums, swelling with amp-frying volume. Marxen presides like a high priestess, unperturbed amid flares, fills and violence. Like Jarboe astride a Justin Broadrick wall of noise, she stakes her claim, with operatic trills and whispered confidences. Dramatic, large-scale stuff.

Jennifer Kelly

Magda Mayas’ Filamental — Ritual Mechanics (Relative Pitch)

Keyboardist Magda Mayas’ music has often evidenced expansive thinking, but it took the resources of a festival to first bring her large group Filamental together. Once convened, she took full advantage of her octet’s assembled potentialities for imagination and sound. Having had one such experience, Mayas wasn’t going to wait for a festival to marshal such a breadth of mindpower and material again, nor was she going to let the impediments to travel and gathering imposed by a world pandemic get in the way. So, she sent out an invitation to an invitation to Filamental’s members and turned their gathered input into two pieces that run a bout 20 minutes in length. Each sets small, contrasting gestures dancing atop a consonant surface of elongated, layered sonorities. Ritual Mechanics is not so much a drone piece as an expression of continuous, focused action, richly detailed and consistently focused.

Bill Meyer

Rob Mazurek — Milan (Clean Feed)

Rob Mazurek has been recording for nearly three decades and performing much longer. His methods encompass composition and improvisation using brass, electronics, voice, and other instruments. In any body of work so broad, there are themes, some more dominant than others. Milan is a successor to Rome, which together comprise a smaller trend that involves recording solo performances in Italian radio studios with nice pianos. Recorded nine years apart, they offer a measure of how Mazurek’s work has changed in that time. Instead of cornet, he plays concert and piccolo trumpets; sternly ceremonial vocalizing and fistfuls of percussion dropped purposefully into the piano assert a more explicitly ritual intent. And, perhaps reflecting the amount of work that Mazurek has done with Damon Locks of late, the electronics now include playback options, so that vocal and instrumental samples (Is that Sun Ra I hear in there? And maybe some Ocora ethnic recordings?) as well as beat patterns muscle their way through the sizzle and smash of the prepared piano. Explicitly conceived as a journey, it’s quite a trip. Mazurek’s ensemble work can be pretty widescreen, but Milan reminds us that he can be epic on his own.

Bill Meyer

Nadja — Jumper (momentarily records)

Out of the many, many records put out by ambient and/or doom metal duo Nadja, it’s truly rare to find one that doesn’t feature Aidan Baker’s guitar in one form or another. But on Jumper, originally released as a bit of an art object on cassette (the online cover art is a look at the contraption that the tape comes in), he restricts himself not just to their drum machine but to layering and processing one particular pattern from it. Leah Buckereff provides bass, a more typical entry in the credits of their release, but here the way the slowly accreting digital noise plays over and around its pulses and feedback gives the whole album a very distinct feeling. Despite the use of drum machine there’s almost no rhythm to the whole hour here (until a surprise right at the end that catches me off guard every time), instead the effect is one of meditative harshness. The result is absolutely industrial, like a factory that’s weirdly compelling to listen to.

Ian Mathers

Orcas — How to Color a Thousand Mistakes (Morr Music)

Orcas — Rafael Anton Irisarri and Benoît Pioulard — haven’t recorded together in a decade, but they have been abundantly busy with their own projects. How to Color a Thousand Mistakes is consistent with past Orcas recordings and also reflects the music they have made in the interim. “Wrong Way to Fall” stands out in both regards, with Pioulard’s husky vocals over shimmering electric guitar solos, synth riffs and minimally complicated, but driving, drums. “Riptide” is populated by a number of different synth parts against a terse countermelody in the guitar. “Swells” has a strong vocal performance, while vibrato and pitch bends in the synths and economical guitar parts make for a memorable arrangement. “Fare” covers all the bases, with Pioulard’s voice double-tracked in a soaring chorus alongside mellifluous electronics, emphatic guitars, and plenty of drum fills. The recording’s closer, “Umbra,” has an extended introduction with a bass melody and warm synths. Then tangy dissonance and glissandos abound in both voice and instruments. It epitomizes the atmospheric textures that Orcas seem able to summon at will.

Christian Carey

Oxygen Destroyer — Guardian of the Universe (Redefining Darkness)

Guardian of the Universe by Oxygen Destroyer

Guardian of the Universe is another slab of monster-movie-themed, death-metal-inflected thrash from Oxygen Destroyer. The Seattle-based band’s previous LP, Sinister Monstrosities Spawned by the Unfathomable Ignorance of Mankind (2021), expanded their long-standing kaiju theme to include colossal beasts from outside the canon of the Tojo Studios Godzilla movies. The new record shifts tactics, focusing exclusively on Gamera and the giant turtle’s films for one of Tojo’s competitors, Daiei Films. It’s hard to know how much the record will appeal to listeners for whom those inside-baseball kaiju references mean little to nothing. But if you’re down for songs that attempt to replicate the absurd pleasures of Gamera in flight — head and limbs retracted into its massive shell, which then spins and shoots sheets of sparks from the holes, natch — this may be the record for you. Guardian of the Universe is non-stop fireworks: crazy, thrashy riffs; maniacal flat-out sprints; dive-bombing guitar solos. Should we take any of it seriously? This reviewer won’t hold forth (again) on the cultural stakes of post-war kaiju films. If you know, you know. And mostly what matters here is the band’s complete conviction and the joys of the music’s excesses. In these dog days of summer, it’s exactly what some of us need.

Jonathan Shaw

Peel Dream Magazine — Rose Main Reading Room (Topshelf)

Rose Main Reading Room by Peel Dream Magazine

It’s been four years since I’ve checked in on Peel Dream Magazine, whose second album Agitpop Alterna I described in my Dust review as “just like early Stereolab, with occasional blasts of shoe-gazey guitar thrown in for good measure.” I missed PDM’s third album Pad, so this brings us to album number four, Rose Main Reading Room. There’s still plenty of Stereolab in the mix, especially in the Mary Hansen-style backing vocals, the Farfisa, and the squelchy synth sounds (see “Oblast”). But here there’s more of a lean towards the baroque pop of Sufjan Stevens circa Illinois, mainly thanks to the chunky glimmer of vibraphone and the spiraling flute lines, which really brighten up proceedings. This balance between droning indie-rock and tuneful pop is very pretty, with sufficient musical complexity to invite rewarding repeat listens.

Tim Clarke

Plastic Bubble — Circular Breathing EP (Garden Gate/Moon Control)

The Circular Breathing EP by Plastic Bubble

Here’s a slab of happy, giddy, psychedelic garage rock which, except for the 2024 release date, wouldn’t be out of place in the Elephant Six universe. Lexington, KY’s Matt Taylor and Elisa McCabe are the chief blowers of bubbles, spinning out rough but iridescent songs like “Recontextualize,” where a guitar vamp grinds but vocals drift in pop ideality, “ah, ah, ah,” indeed. A classic indie boy-girl vibe permeates these five songs, with McCabe especially fetching in “Bright Morning.” “Forever” pulls back on the guitar roar to uncover a jaunty, girl-group bounce, with sweet counterparts and harmonies weaving in and around McCabe’s part. The set closes with a banger, part Who, part Fountains of Wayne, and all the way infectious, “Anything and Everything.”

Jennifer Kelly

SUUNS — The Breaks (Joyful Noise)

The Breaks by SUUNS

Elusiveness characterized SUUNS’ last album, 2021’s The Witness. As I noted in my Dusted review, “There’s no denying that its elusive character is part of its charm, but there are stretches where it feels more evasive than elusive, stubbornly refusing to engage more directly.” On their new album, The Breaks, the Montreal band are more direct in terms of the sounds they’re employing, but more evasive when it comes to songwriting. The majority of contemporary pop music is based around heavily effected vocal melodies and beats, which The Breaks seems to take as a cue towards similar immediacy. However, aside from the title track, the nagging piano of “Road Signs and Meanings,” and the loping stomp of opener “Vanishing Point,” this record is a tough nut to crack.

Tim Clarke

Tatsongs — Bushcraft (Self-Release)

Bushcraft by tat songs

Tatsongs are neither tat, nor really songs. The former implies fussy decoration, and these long, glacially evolving pieces seem as raw and elemental as rock formations. You can almost hear an icy wind blowing through their sheered off contours. The latter argues for a Pavlov’s buzzer of pleasing tone arrangements, and Tatsongs’ Tom Sadler is really not concerned whether you can guess then next 10 seconds of his compositions from the preceding 20. But even so, there’s something to be said for looming, sheeny layers of guitar and synth sounds that carve space and time into epic, barren landscapes. Tones vibrate in and out of true, zooming close and fading back, twitching in rhythm and coalescing in static fuzzed drones. Not a song in the bunch, nor much embroidery, but powerful stuff nonetheless.

Jennifer Kelly

TELESTIALVISIONS — Taurus in a Field (Island House)

Taurus in a Field by TELESTIALVISION

As Dittocrush, Pittsburgh resident Trevor D. Crush assembles tape loops into ambient symphonies. He often adds layers of live instrumentation from other musicians, such as Island House associate Chaz Prymek (Lake Mary, Fuubutsushi) and guitarist Ryan Fedor. TELESTIALVISIONS is his latest project, a tag team with New York guitarist Brinton Jones. The pair offer up a frothy brew that tastes rich and complex. Their debut Taurus in a Field is a pair of woozy collages that, while undeniably loose, are sharp in focus when compared to Dittocrush’s ghostly soundscapes. Crush’s tapes construct tangible shapes that intersect in a variety of patterns, while Jones unveils angelic melodies with his guitar. These two are telling a story that’s more Borges than Burroughs, a fantastical tale that defies conventional logic but manages to meander toward a graspable conclusion.

Bryon Hayes

Tycho — Infinite Health (Ninja Tune)

Infinite Health by Tycho

Tycho is Scott Hansen, and Scott Hansen is a designer. You can hear Hansen’s day job in Tycho’s music: the clean lines, the smart use of space, the sheer digestibility of it all. But should music go down quite this easy? Listening to Infinite Health feels a little bit like you’re at a trendy gym, playing a bit-part in an advert, or hitting up a bar packed with influencers. The common denominator is wanting to feel seen; everything plays a part in attracting attention. The synths sound like Boards of Canada, some of the funkier electro-pop moments sound like Daft Punk, and there’s an expensive sheen over everything. It’s hard to deny it’s appealing, but it also feels like experiencing capitalist obsolescence in real time.

Tim Clarke

White Collar—S/T (Static Shock)

White Collar by White Collar

Listeners with a long memory for North American hardcore might flash on those mid-1980s records by White Flag when listening to this new release from White Collar. Like that earlier Inland Empire band, White Collar frequently turns its critical gaze and its caustic smart-assery on the contemporary cultural climate of punk and politics as lifestyle (and your reviewer uses that odious term advisedly here). Songs like “Compassion Fatigue” and “Petition Signer” snarl at and spit on liberalism’s excesses of self-righteous smugness, to often hilarious effect. There’s a puritanical element to Gen Z’s dispositions and discourse that White Collar finds deeply irritating — not that the band is against strong ethico-political speech; check out “Meat Market” and “Equal Wrongs.” This is not the space for sustained analysis of Gen Z punk, and the extent to which we may want some sort of political purity from punk in the first place. But certainly, it’s an intrinsic good for punk to have snotty, disputatious and nasty voices in the mix. White Collar’s songs are short and sharp, and vocalist Loosey C’s performance is memorably unpleasant. Snarl on, punks.

Jonathan Shaw

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needfantasticstories · 7 months

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My Light

The sun was high when Sky stepped out of the house he shared with Zelda—his Sun—in the glen near Lanayru. She was cutting wood for the winter; a task he’d promised to help with before the letter came. Crimson waited for him by the gate, preening a curious Indigo.

“Any word? Is Groose doing okay, or is he still sulking?” Sun set her ax on the tree stump and looked at the basket of vegetables and fruit she’d set aside from his garden for their dinner. Sky was many things, but a good cook was not one of them, no matter all the training Wild had tried to give him. Growing it was another matter, with Sun’s aid. She sighed, as they both realized their dinners would be lonely tonight.

“He’s missing. Groose hasn’t shown up in any of the settlements. I’m getting worried. He should have been back by now, and the winter floods are coming soon. But I want to check the mines again. I might be out late.”

“Sky, I’m sure he'll be fine. He just needs time to think about how to make it up to Peatrice. He’s probably rage-building a new track out there. But let me send you out with a few supplies for you both before you go. And I’ll keep a candle in the window for you.”

“You’re the best, Sun. I’ll watch for your light.”

***

Hyrule Castle was a monument to the devotion Sky and Sun felt for their people and their future. They had designed it together, based on the many castles, palaces, monuments, and temples they had seen on their adventures. But they’d always known it would outlast them.

Sky ran up the tower steps, anxious to see his Sun, old joints and sore knees be damned. His daughter, Queen Zelda II, ran up the steps behind him, well into her fifties and yet suddenly a child once more, anxious for her mother.

“Father, what if she doesn’t…”

“We don’t know for certain, my Moonpearl." The old King answered. "We can hope, so let's hold on to it. She’s always been stubborn.”

Despite their hurried climb, Sky paused at the door. He paused, and said one last prayer to the goddess he knew could not longer hear him, and stepped inside. Evening sunlight filtered through a stained glass window showing the Triforce framed by a protecting loftwing. Dust motes danced in the beams that shone on the bed, where lay his Sun.

“The healers said you called for us…” He trailed off when he saw her. Only this morning she had been at rest, if a bit fevered. Now her face was nearly as white as her hair. Her breath rattled loud enough to hear from the doorway. Her shaking hands, once calloused and now soft with age, shook as she reached out to her family.

“My Sun.” Sky ran to her side, ignoring the healers who stood with heads bowed nearby. He left his circlet and red cloak at the foot of the bed. They were always cumbersome.

She took his hands, their old and worn fingers interweaving. “I know, my Sky. But…” her breath rattled as she tried to breath. “But Zelda... Help her.”

“How? She’s grown. She doesn't’ need—”

“You helped me once, when the changes came. But you…and I… know… this isn’t… the end of our story.”

“Mother?” Zelda came cautiously to her mother’s side, and she climbed onto the bed to sit beside her.

Sun seemed to find strength at seeing her daughter, and took Zelda’s strong hand in her aged one. “Darling. It’s time for you to come into your own power now. You are Queen already, but soon you will be something more . Take it slow. We are both somewhat fragile. But this light is yours now. It’s time.”

She kissed her daughter’s hand, who curled beside her mother on the bed as she used to when she was still a child. Her father leaned over Queen Sun, and kneeling at her bedside he kissed her one last time. He’d never hesitated, never been ashamed of his love for her. And nothing had been able to stand between them. Death was their last enemy.

And she had defeated it before they were born.

“I’ll keep a candle in the window for you,” he whispered as her eyes closed.

“And so will I. I’ll watch…for your light too.” She replied, and fell asleep for the last time.

***

Night was falling quickly. Link sat in the open carriage, small and wide-eyed between his mother and Grandpa Smith. He admired the massive turrets of Hyrule Castle, where they would be living now. Father rode on his warhorse ahead of the carriage, leading them to the ceremony where he would receive his promotion to Captain. It was a matter of pride and celebration for the whole family.

As they rode past the gates, Link looked up. High in a tower, a lone candle glowed beside a stained glass window, the image there of the Triforce and two golden wings shone bright in the light.

#linked universe #linked universe fanfic #lu sky #skipwrites #lu sun #zelink #lu four #febuwhump 2024 #febuwhumpday20 #tw major character death #but it's also kinda fluffy while sad #clear and shameless Sun favoritism here

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polizwrites · 8 days

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PoliZ's WIP Update - 18 Sep 2024

Getting back on track with my weekly writing goal. I touched five fics (2 new & 3 WIPs) for a total of 2099 words, most of which were on a single fic.

On Ao3, I posted:

Some Other Beginning’s End - No Powers Tony POV one-shot (Brock/Bucky breakup = Tony & Bucky)

Short-Timing It - Pre-War (barely) Bucky & Steve slice of life ficlet.

On Tumblr I posted:

Duty Calls - Established Winteriron ficlet

I’m juggling 20+ active/semi-active WIPs with my current deadline being the new WinterIron Gets It Done server bingo event which runs til the end of September.

See below cut for what I’m working on/planning to work on - arranged more or less by bingos/challenges/etc. As always, feel free to send me prompts or plot bunnies as well as asks regarding any of these projects or any other WIPs I’ve got out there. Interaction really helps feed the Muse and keep me motivated!

WinterIron Gets It Done Bingo [WIGID] (Ends 30 Sep 2024)

This new WinterIron Discord server event runs through the month of September and is a flash bingo where you choose one or more five-square bingo strips to complete. I’m targeting to get at least two strips done for a blackout - with a stretch goal of three - I’ve currently got 11 fills across three strips.

* Classic_5 - Favorite Song - combined this with the Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF270 Lights and Sirens] for Duty Calls, an established WinterIron ficlet where a date gets interrupted. It came in at 203 words and will get posted to Ao3 by the end of the month.

* Author_5 - 1k Word Ficlet - claiming this with Some Other Beginning’s End, which I posted to Ao3 on Friday. Tony’s a bartender dealing with an a-hole patron (Brock) and his just-broken-up-with boyfriend (Bucky). It crossed over with my pJBB C2_A2 - "You deserve someone who makes you happy." and TSB R4 - Bartender squares. The fic ends with a potential of a matchup, but is platonic. It came in at 1170 words, stretching the “1k ficlet’ a bit.😁

Build-A-Bucky Bingo [BaBB_R1] (Ends 31 Oct 2024)

Another fun year-long event from the folks at @buckybarnesevents! Each month there’s a list of prompts and you choose (at least) one each month for your card! At thirty-three fills and two months to go, I seem to be going a bit overboard …. 😁

* May: Bucky’s Trigger Words - combined this with a previous Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF251 Out There] for Just To Live One Day Out There - a Winter Soldier self-reflective ficlet. It came in at 312 words and will get posted to Ao3 Real Soon.

* September: First Meeting - filling this with the upcoming Chapter Nine of A Sugar-Coated Pill where Bucky gets to meet Obadiah Stane. Needless to say, he doesn’t get along with the older alpha. It’s crossing over with my TSB: Aug Adoptable: Resolve – I’ve got it nearly drafted at 1732 words written and am targeting posting possibly on the 20th or the 27th

* September: Feelings Denial - got inspired to work on a sequel to A Little Bit Carried Away - looking at Bucky and Tony living together and where their relationship is starting to lead. I have either a one-shot or first chapter of Carrying Things Forward drafted at 880 words; it crosses over with my WIB N4 - A/B/O: Mates and pJBB - C2_A1 - "There's nothing wrong with you." squares. Also targeting posting this on the 20th or 27th.

Flufftober 2024 [FlfT_24] (Runs 1-31 Oct)

This writing challenge hosted by @flufftober runs for the month of October, but the prompt list has already been published, so you can get a jump start! My goal is to write one fic a week that incorporates these prompts - here’s some possible crossovers - if there’s one that sounds really good - let me know!

* 1. Lost Pet Meet Cute - crossover with BBB C2 - Bonded animal?

* 5. Acorn, Chestnut, Pine Cone - Decided to combine this with R3 - AU: adventurers/explorers for some Tony & Morgan fluff. Up, Down, North, South, East and West is coming in at 347 words and will post on October 5th.

* 10. Bet, Game, Contest - crossover with BBB U5 - Secret Admirer?

* 11. Ingredients & Spells - crossover with TSB S3 - KINK: Aphrodisiacs?

* 18. Bewitched - crossover with BBB B1 - Magic?

* 22 - Heirloom - crossover with WIB G2 - Edwin Jarvis & TSB T2 - Wedding - A tie tack or cuff links that Tony gifts to Bucky as his ‘something old’? Probably will write this as a sequel/second chapter to Carrying it Forward.

Whumptober 2024 [WmpT_24] (Runs 1-31 Oct)

This writing challenge hosted by @whumptpber runs for the month of October, but the prompt list has already been published, so you can get a jump start! My goal is to write two fics (whump isn’t normally my bag) that incorporates these prompts - need to explore more potential crossovers.

* No. 2: TRUST ISSUES - Amusement Park | Role Reversal | “You got away with the crime while the knife’s in my back.” – crossover with WIB N5 - "I'm here for you." and possibly pJBB - C2_B2 - Being there for someone after a traumatic event

WinterIron Bingo 2 [WIB_R2] (Ends 16 Dec 2024)

Signups are still open for pre-made cards for Round Two of this super-fun bingo event! I have eighteen fills and zero WIPs at the moment - setting this aside for the moment, as I have other time-sensitive events going.

* Iron Soldier (One Bingo, One Fill) - looking at combining my Column B prompts: Matchmaker, Bucky Riding Tony, Stark Gala, Inside Joke and Threesome. Still working on a plot - if you have any suggestions/want-to-sees - let me know!

* I3 - Car Sex - Have a fun ficlet in mind for this - some of the dialogue & such already worked out in my head.

* N4 - A/B/O: Mates - see BaBB September: Feelings Denial above.

* N5 - "I'm here for you." - Possibly the next chapter of Lady Natasha’s Consort and Lord Steve’s Companion ?

Bucky Barnes Bingo - Round Six [BBB - R6] (Ends 31 Mar)

This amazing bingo event from the folks over at @buckybarnesbingo is back! I have fifteen fills with one WIPs at the moment, but a couple more crossovers planned.

* U3 - Yelena Belova - Magica and I are circling back around to Peresmešnik, (aka Three Avengers and a Baby) - with the next chapter featuring Tony’s interactions with Mirriam, and a revelation about her parentage. The chapter is sitting at about 475 words, and needs more fleshing out before we’ll be ready to post … maybe next month?

* K2 - IMAGE: Bucky and Steve in Siberian silo hallway (CA:CW) - Combined this with the Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF269 Living Weapon] for Reconstruction - a fix-it/canon divergent ficlet where Steve, Bucky and Tony team up instead of fighting. It came in at 268 words and will get posted to Ao3 before the event is over.

* K4 - Last Times/Farewells - Posted Short-Timing It to Ao3 this morning. I combined this prompt with a previous Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF257 Count The Days ] for Short-Timing It - a pre-war (just barely) Bucky & Steve (Stucky if you squint) ficlet that came in at 312 words.

Tony Stark Bingo - Mark VIII [TSB_R8] (Ends 31 May)

This amazing bingo event from the folks over at @tonystarkbingo is back! Late signups will start next month if you want to join in on the fun! I have seven squares filled and four WIPs - I need to plan out more crossovers!

* T1 - Watching Helplessly - Posted Stranded Among the Stars to Tumblr as a crossover with the Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF265 Galaxies Away]. It’s a Nebula & Tony ficlet set on the ship - it came in at 345 words and will get posted to Ao3 before the event ends.

* A5 - excessive - Used this towards the August Tony Stark Round Robin collaborative fic - Tony throws Bruce a birthday party and shenanigans ensure. I’ll share the link once it gets posted.

* R2 - I love you 3000 - came up with an Endgame-compliant drabble for this prompt: A Difficult Decision is a look into Tony’s thought processes right after tucking Morgan into bed. Will post next week.

* R4 - Bartender - see WIGID Author_5 - 1K ficlet above.

* K3 - Pepper Potts - see WIB O3 - Love Confession above

Hawkeyes Bingo [HB_R2] (Ends TBD)

Working on this Tumblr event - got a 3x3 card and am looking forward to creating more Clint-centric content and trying my hand at a bit of Kate Bishop fic as well!

* A3 - Awkward Flirting – this might be a good entry into my first femslash fic with Kate/Yelena?

* C1 - Magic - Combined this with a previous Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF259 House of Cards] for Keep a Steady Hand. Clint notices Bucky getting frustrated with a task and offers to help. It came in at 632 words and will post to Ao3 possibly later this month.

Post July Break Bingo 2024 [pJBB_24] (Ends 30 Jun 2025)

As I mentioned above, I requested two 2x3 cards for this Discord-server only event from @julybreakbingo – so if you want to join in the fun, let me know and I’ll try to get you an invite! I have two fics posted & two WIPS and need to figure out some more crossovers.

* C2_A1 - "There's nothing wrong with you." - see BaBB: September: Feelings Denial above.

* C2_A2 - "You deserve someone who makes you happy." - see WIGID Author_5 - 1k ficlet above.

* C2_B1 - Courting/courted in a different way than they're familiar with - posted A Symbol of Devotion on Tumblr as a crossover with the Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF267 Gifted Violets] - a bit of Stony fluff with Tony buying Steve little things for his apartment. It came in at 374 words and will get posted to Ao3 before this event is over.

Warm and Fluffy Bingo [WFB] (no end date)

Eight fills on my card, courtesy of @warmandfluffybingocards - need to try for another crossover or two!

* I2 - Vulnerable Drunk - matched this up with a previous Flash Fiction Friday prompt of [#FFF258 Milky Way Dreams] for Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines - a MIT-era Tony & Rhodey ficlet, where a drunk Tony shares a childhood dream with his best friend. It came in at 318 words and will get posted to Ao3 at some point.

————

On other creative fronts: I am working on a Stitch head ornament for a gift exchange, along with gearing up for Marvel Trumps Hate 2024 - have been posting pics of previous creations in order to make a masterpost to link my auctions to.

If you’re looking for one of a kind gifts for birthdays or other celebrations, check out Stuffed With Character over on Facebook for a full list of my designs (now over 150!). These soft stuffed figures are mostly Marvel and monsters, but I have some Star Wars, Star Trek, DC and Disney figures as well. Plus I love to take custom design requests for any fandom!

#writing stuff #wip wednesday #wip update #shameless self promo

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mediaevalmusereads · 6 months

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The Warm Hands of Ghosts. By Katherine Arden. Del Rey, 2024.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: historical fiction, supernatural

Series: N/A

Summary: January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.

***Full review below.***

CONTENT WARNINGS: descriptions of trench warfare and wartime injuries, PTSD

OVERVIEW: I picked up this book on a whim when I saw it displayed at a local bookstore. I generally find myself interested in World War I fiction, so I was hoping I'd get a good story out of this. Unfortunately, I can't say this book had a profound impact on me. While I liked the way Arden explored memory and how she crafted the main antagonist, it was difficult to connect to the protagonists and the plot didn't feel deliberate. As a result, I can only give this book 3 stars.

WRITING: Arden's prose is fairly clean and will probably appeal to most readers. It flows just fine and balances showing and telling well, and it even has some intriguing descriptions and imagery; however, I wouldn't necessarily call it atmospheric or particularly visceral. It's fine - it's just not very lush.

PLOT: The plot of this book is divided into two timelines. In 1918, we follow Laura Iven, a discharged combat nurse who receives her brother's effects but no information about how he died on the front in Belgium. She decides to return to the front to find out what happened to him. In 1917, we follow Freddie Iven, a soldier who finds himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a German soldier. The two decide to keep each other alive as they make their escape and leave the front, only to encounter a strange man on the way.

The first third of this plot progressed somewhat slowly and unevenly. Part of me didn't enjoy it because it didn't seem like Laura was very driven to find her brother, nor did she really have any whiff that something was amiss. Mostly, we follow Laura as she travels with two other women and attends parties, but I never got the sense that she was calculating her next moves or trying to use her experience to uncover information being withheld from her about her brother. She mostly just accepts that he's gone and decides to try to find out for... fun? I don't know - she didn't seem very driven or obsessive. As a result, I had a hard time caring about her progress.

The next third was a little better since we are introduced to a mysterious figure named Faland. In my opinion, Arden gives the game away too quickly regarding who Faland is, but I enjoyed watching him and figuring out whether he was real or just a story.

The last third was perhaps the most interesting part because we see Laura actually tracking down her brother and Freddie surrendering to oblivion. I liked the way this section depicted trauma and memory as well as how it associated war with hell.

But altogether, I don't think this plot had a huge impact because character relationships felt surface-level. Perhaps if more was done to deepen the connections between characters, I would have felt more invested in their plots. But as it stands, it didn't seem like Laura was particularly preoccupied with finding her brother, nor did the plot make use of suspense to keep the reader on edge.

TL;DR: The Warm Hands of Ghosts is memorable for its antagonist, but the lack of strong character relationships makes this book feel devoid of suspense and urgency. While it does a great job exploring shell-shock and the mental toll of war, it is held back by a protagonist who doesn't seem very driven and a plot that doesn't pick up for quite a while.

CHARACTERS: Laura, the combat nurse, is interesting on paper but is harder to connect to in practice. While I sympathized with her desire to find her brother, I didn't quite feel like their connection was strong and I didn't think she pursued her goals with much zeal (at least until the last third of the book). I think if Arden did a little more work to show us more about her past and her inner life during the first third, I might have felt different.

Freddie, the soldier, is a little more interesting because we see a lot of what affects him. We see him in the trenches and we see his reactions to traumatic events. It's a lot easier to feel invested in his story. However, his devotion to Laura is similarly ill-defined and surface-level, and I didn't feel like I understood why the two fought so hard to get to one another aside from the fact that they were siblings (which isn't much of a reason on its own - siblings can hate each other).

Supporting characters were fine, but I didn't feel like much was done to show me how their relationships with the protagonists became driving forces behind action. By that I mean I feel like I was told more about relationships than shown, so even the most emotional bonds didn't feel very affective.

Faland, the antagonist (sort of), was perhaps the most interesting character, in part because it wasn't clear at first who he was. I liked the creative use of his musical powers and his desire for stories, and I think Arden did a good job crafting him as a commentary on war and shell-shock.

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dfroza · 7 months

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Today’s reading from the ancient books of Proverbs and Psalms

for february 23 of 2024 with Proverbs 23 and Psalm 23, accompanied by Psalm 65 for the 65th day of Astronomical Winter and Psalm 54 for day 54 of the year (with the consummate book of 150 Psalms in its 1st revolution this year)

[Proverbs 23]

When sitting down to eat with a ruler,

take a moment to think about who you are with and what you are doing.

If you are the type who eats too much too fast,

do whatever is necessary to curb your enthusiasm for food.

Also, do not eye the ruler’s delicacies,

for the food may not be what it seems.

Do not overwork yourself just to become wealthy;

have enough sense to know when to quit.

As soon as you become fixed on riches, they vanish.

For suddenly they sprout wings

and become like a soaring eagle flying high in the sky.

Do not sit down and eat the bread of a tight-fisted fellow

or desire any of his delicacies,

For deep down he’s keeping track of the cost.

He may say, “Eat up! Drink your fill!”

but he does not mean a word of it.

You’ll be sick and lose what little you did eat,

and you’ll waste your breath carrying on a pleasant conversation.

Do not waste your wisdom on a fool,

for he doesn’t care for anything you have to say.

Do not shift the property line by moving the boundary markers your ancestors established

or try to steal property from orphans

Because their Redeemer is strong,

and He will plead their case against you.

Develop a disciplined life.

Be attentive so you can be well informed.

Do not withhold discipline from children,

since corporal punishment will not kill them.

In fact, it may be that kind of punishment

that will save them from an early grave.

My son, if you live wisely,

then my life will be fulfilled.

My very soul will jump for joy

when you speak what is true and right.

Don’t be envious of those wrapped up in sin,

but always maintain a healthy respect for the Eternal.

Your future with Him will be certain,

and you will not have hoped in vain.

Listen, my son, be wise,

and steer your life on the right course.

Do not spend time with heavy wine drinkers

or those who gorge themselves on meat.

For both the drunk and the glutton will end up broke,

sleeping life away, and clothed in rags.

Pay attention to your father—after all, he gave you life—

and don’t ignore your mother in her old age.

Invest in truth, sock it away!

Never cash in wisdom, guidance, or insight.

The parents of the right-living will celebrate;

yes, parents of children who make wise choices are happy.

So make your parents happy;

delight your mother—after all, she brought you into this world.

My son, devote yourself to me fully.

Observe my ways, and follow my directions:

Being drawn to a prostitute is like falling down into a deep well,

and being involved with a wicked woman is like descending into a narrow well.

You may never get out alive.

She waits for you, ready to ambush you like a thief

and ready to multiply unfaithfulness among men.

Who is wallowing in anguish? Who is full of sorrow?

Who has conflicts? Who has complaints?

Who has bruises and can’t remember where they came from?

Who has bloodshot eyes?

You know who: those who stay up late finishing off the wine,

those who can’t stop savoring spiced wines.

Look away from the enticing beauty of wine, the deep red hue;

ignore how it shimmers in the cup

and glides down your throat.

Eventually, when you least expect it, it strikes like a snake;

it stings like viper venom.

Your vision will blur, and you’ll imagine strange things;

you will say crazy, hurtful things and regret it later.

You will reel and stagger as if caught on a wave of seasickness,

as a sailor who holds on to a mast for dear life.

You will say, “They slapped me, but it didn’t hurt.

They beat me, and I didn’t feel a thing!

Whenever I wake up from this stupor,

I’ll have another drink!”

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 23 (The Voice)

[Psalm 23]

A psalm of David:

Adonai is my shepherd; I lack nothing.

He has me lie down in grassy pastures,

he leads me by quiet water,

he restores my inner person.

He guides me in right paths

for the sake of his own name.

Even if I pass through death-dark ravines,

I will fear no disaster; for you are with me;

your rod and staff reassure me.

You prepare a table for me,

even as my enemies watch;

you anoint my head with oil

from an overflowing cup.

Goodness and grace will pursue me

every day of my life;

and I will live in the house of Adonai

for years and years to come.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 23 (Complete Jewish Bible)

[Psalm 65]

For the worship leader. A song of David.

All will stand in awe to praise You.

Praise will sweep through Zion, the Sacred City, O God.

Solemn vows uttered to You will now be performed.

You hear us pray in words and silence;

all humanity comes into Your presence.

Injustice overwhelms me!

But You forgive our sins, restoring as only You can.

You invite us near, drawing us

into Your courts—what an honor and a privilege!

We feast until we’re full on the goodness of Your house,

Your sacred temple made manifest.

You leave us breathless when Your awesome works answer us by putting everything right.

God of our liberation—

You are the hope of all creation, from the far corners of the earth

to distant life-giving oceans.

With immense power, You erected mountains.

Wrapped in strength, You compelled

Choppy seas,

crashing waves,

and crowds of people

To sit in astonished silence.

Those who inhabit the boundaries of the earth are awed by Your signs,

strong and subtle hints of Your indelible presence.

Even the dawn and dusk respond to You with joy.

You spend time on the good earth,

watering and nourishing the networks of the living.

God’s river is full of water!

By preparing the land,

You have provided us grain for nourishment.

You are the gentle equalizer: soaking the furrows,

smoothing soil’s ridges,

Softening sun-baked earth with generous showers,

blessing the fruit of the ground.

You crown the year with a fruitful harvest;

the paths are worn down by carts overflowing with unstoppable growth.

Barren desert pastures yield fruit;

craggy hills are now dressed for celebration.

Meadows are clothed with frolicking flocks of lambs;

valleys are covered with a carpet of autumn-harvest grain;

the land shouts and sings in joyous celebration.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 65 (The Voice)

[Psalm 54]

For the worship leader. A contemplative song of David when his friends, the Ziphites, betrayed him to Saul. Accompanied by strings.

Liberate me, O God, by the authority of Your name.

Vindicate me through Your legendary power.

Hear my prayer, O God;

let the words of my mouth reach Your sympathetic ear.

The truth is, these strangers are rallying against me;

cold-blooded men seek to slay me;

they have no respect for You.

[pause]

But see now! God comes to rescue me;

the Lord is my valiant supporter.

He will repay my enemies for the harm they have done; they are doomed!

According to Your faithful promises, silence them.

I will sacrifice to You willingly;

I will lift Your name by shouts of thanksgiving, O Eternal One, for Your name is good.

God has pulled me out from every one of the troubles that encompass me,

and I have seen what it means to stand over my enemies in triumph.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 54 (The Voice)

A note from The Voice translation:

This is a lament reflecting the time when David was betrayed to Saul (1 Samuel 23:6–29). It expresses hope that God will save by His name. The name refers to the covenant name given to Moses at Mount Sinai (Exodus 3). We have translated it “the Eternal One.” For the ancients the name of God has power precisely because it embodies the presence of God. To call upon the name was to call upon God to remember His covenant promises and be present in power in order to rescue His people.

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subwaysurf45 · 3 years

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Winter Makes Ice (Ep.5)

Summary: you’re captured after a brawl at the Avengers building, Bucky and others must save you before Hydra makes a new Winter Soldier out of you, Bucky has given up that title.

Words: 4344

Episode: five

Warning: violence, nudity, needles, descriptions of injury

Masterlist! Winter Makes Ice Episode: Four

Time: unknown

Date: unknown

You knew they had full control over you. There was nothing you could do even though you were conscious all the time, your body did what they wanted but your brain screamed against it. There were times where they’d ask you to do the impossible, they’d make you climb the tallest tree in the forest that surrounded the building and then make you jump down without anything to catch you, you’d land and your ankle would break; the worst was when they told you to break it back in place.

It was like you were sat in a large chair as you watched your life unfold in the cell, your wrists were strapped to this imaginary chair so you couldn’t reach out to block the punch, ankles were clasped so you couldn’t run away. You never became lucid, it was always you watching through the shell of your body. Crying yourself to sleep wasn’t an option, you weren’t allowed to cry, or laugh, or scream, or smile; you were dead on the outside. The feeling of control was so close but yet so far away.

There was a moment, just a moment. More I.C.E. had just been injected as you hung from the cuff restraints, you swung lightly as you dangled there. The cell door closed and the silence you were left with was getting louder by the second, your brain starting to pound like it always did and right at the back of your head near the bottom began to pulse, like you were being stabbed. The pain, hunger, exhaustion built up until that one moment, your eyes were slowly closing but as they closed you could see something right in front of you, something was moving. You couldn’t reach out to touch it because you were chained but as you crossed your eyes all you saw was a little black thing slightly swinging with you.

It was the tip of your nose.

Your fingers had also begun to blacken, it was about to hit your first knuckle.

That was when you let the control fully go to the I.C.E. flowing in your veins, the power to keep yourself above water was only getting more and more tiring. No one had tried to save you so they probably were never going to come. Part of you thought Bucky would be there in less than a day, he’d break walls and towers for you, but it might have just been words to make you think he loved you, just sounds put together as a fake.

Time: 6:10am

Date: October 3rd 2024

“Darling, It’s me, It’s Bucky, you’re safe now.” Bucky spoke softly, he flickered between your eyes and nose. You didn’t say anything, just looked right through him. “I will not fight you, but we need to get out of here, we have to go.” He urged, right when he finished talking you stepped forward, he was shocked to see you move, it was rigid and robotic. “Baby, explain what’s going on, please baby?” Bucky stepped forward and reached out, his hand lightly touched your shoulder but he studied your face as he did so. Your nose would have scrunched up but with the lack of that it was just your eyebrows that pulled together. Bucky looked around the room to try and find any sign of how to get you out of your trance; the papers he flicked through were now getting thoroughly read through. All you did was stare at him, waiting for a command.

“Bucky, it’s all clear down here, some got away though,” Steve breathed heavily as he spoke through the coms. “There's this guy who looked to be the head and he got away, didn’t get a good look at him.”

Bucky turned to you, “who’s the leader here?”

“No one gave their name.” You answer quickly.

“What did he look like?” Bucky left the papers and walked to you, he grabbed a lab coat on the way to cover your scared and naked body.

“Slick black hair. Black eyes. Heart shaped face. No facial hair. Slit through his left eyebrow. Hydra ring on his finger.” Your eyes closed as you computed the man who poured the ice water on you multiple times. “Height: six foot. Weight: around one eighty. Scars, markings, tattoos: none.” Bucky watched you in shock, “any other specifics, James?”

“N-no, well done.” He nodded and threw the coat around you, “we’re going to leave now, okay?” Bucky took your hand and led you toward the door.

Your feet tread silently while Bucky’s combat boots echoed three times down the grey hallway, it scared you every time he’d step. With every loud sound came a hard punch, it was a way for you to brace yourself when they’d catch you talking about your past life. As you walked closer to the doors your fingers found their way to the walls, still grey like the floor but clean, the floor was covered in dead bodies and blood from the invasion.

The doctors and agents you knew were slumped over against the wall or splayed out in the middle of the hallways, some people’s blood had congealed while others still created a larger pool around the Hydra operatives. The smell of death didn’t read on your face but it did on Bucky’s, the smell of the inside of your cell just carried out here it seemed like. You were unaware of your smell, part of you thought it was the lack of nose but the other knew it was the lack of fresh air and being surrounded by copious amounts of blood.

“Where to, Sergeant Barnes?” the feeling of someone holding your hand was foreign, his thumb kept swiping back and forth.

“Call me Bucky,” he looked back with sorrow in his eyes. You stopped walking and lowered your head, “what are you doing?” he asked.

“Waiting for punishment,” you spoke softly, knowing they went easier on you if you knew you messed up. There’d be times where you’d push your luck and stare them down but once you grew tired of being tough you head would bow and you waited for the strike, it was now a reaction to any type of dissatisfactory.

“No, no punishment anymore,” his eyes filled with tears and he brought you under his arms, his lips kissed the crown of your head as he opened the doors. He kept you under his arm as he opened them, metal arm gripping right on your forearm.

The sun was barely meeting the surface and yet you had to squint to adjust, everything had a hue of red. The grass felt foreign under your bare feet as you stepped off the tiles and into nature, your toes gripped the leaves and grass as they walked. Your lungs felt like they were about to explode with the intake of fresh air, your nose could still work but it was slightly harder to breathe, the cool wind blew into your mouth and gripped the back of your throat which made you double over to the cough. Your knee popped out of the front slit on the closed lab coat, you were used to feeling naked and vulnerable; Bucky was the one to close it again.

Steve, Wanda, and Nat all stood by the jet.

Wanda screamed your name and ran up to you, her arms pulled you into a tight hug but you curled in and waited for the strike. She pulled away and the feeling of rigidness, “y/n?” She questioned, her hand coming to cup your cheek but you stepped back and held your hand up for protection. Wanda brought her hands into her chest, she looked between Bucky and you but Bucky just shook his head with a few tear tracks present on his face; Wanda was beginning to develop her own after she looked back at you before turning away.

You didn’t really know why everyone was crying, “Scarlet Witch, Wanda Maximof.” your head slightly bowed, you looked over her to see the others behind her shoulder, “Captain Steve Rogers and Natasha Rominoff, a pleasure.” Their faces seemed worried and Nat looked disgusted, she brought her hand to cover her mouth as she walked up the steps to the jet.

Wanda got your attention again, “hello, we’re going to take you home, alright?” Wanda took your hand, “do you remember me?”

“From?” was all you said as you made it into the jet. Wanda covered sob with her hand as she turned away from you to sit beside Nat, she was also crying.

Steve didn’t even look at you, he walked straight to Bucky. Steve caught him right as Bucky’s knees were buckling, Bucky caught onto Steve and they both slowly made it to the ground. It seemed like they guided each other, both holding onto one another for dear life. It was a common understanding, grief was written on both of them.

“She’s fucking gone, Steve!” Bucky cried into Steve’s uniform, the blue turning navy with the tears. “She called me James! She doesn’t know who I am, I can't- I don know- what did they-”

“Bucky, it’s alright,” Steve calmed him as Bucky began to hyperventilate, “we’re going to get her back, I promise.” Steve gripped onto Bucky’s shoulders and they both stood, a little wobbly but both were extremely tired and light headed. “I’ll handle everything,” they walked to the jet, “just be there for her and I figure everything else out, alright?” Steve made Bucky look at him.

“Sure…” was all Bucky could muster.

They all made it to the jet, you were placed in a room off to the right. Bucky went right in there to see you curled on the ground when there was an examination table in the middle of the room, he kneeled beside you and ghosted a hand down your shin to try and get your attention.

“It’s Bucky, let’s sit up on the table, okay?” Bucky eased but you didn’t move, his eyes closed as he fought with himself. He didn’t want to abuse your injected substance, but he really needed you on the exam table to check your wounds. “On the exam table.” he didn’t speak harshly or yell, it was just Bucky’s normal tone.

You shot up instantly and sat on the edge of the table, your legs hung off it and the lab coat was forgotten, it was still around you but it seemed you were told to be naked so often it became second nature. Bucky turned toward you and stood between your legs so he could get a good look at you, he could tell you were staring deep into his eyes, he didn’t want to look in yours yet, he wanted to look you deep in the eyes and have you pull him in for a kiss, maybe it was selfish but he needed it.

“I’m going to do something called a head-to-toe check,” he informed but he knew you knew what this was. He slipped on the disposable gloves, “I know you have cuts and scars but I need to find active bleeding first, alright?” Bucky held up his hands to show nothing was on the gloves. “Tell me if I’m making you uncomfortable.”

“Nothing is-”

“That’s an order.” Bucky added, “I’m commanding you to tell me if you don’t want me touching somewhere,” he knew he had checked you, there might be a way you could find a loophole in his command and get him further from a checkmate but he was making progress.

His hands gently tapped all around you, he was asking questions as he did so but you didn’t answer any of them. You were now looking straight forward, when Bucky looked to your face for any sign of his girl you’d give no hints or answer. His hands worked down to your chest, he hesitated over your breasts but you gave no indication that you were uncomfortable, when he looked for bumps, bruises, or blood he didn’t find much, just scratch marks that looked old. He did the same when he hit your waist, not a lot of touching but looking, it wasn’t thorough but he knew you wouldn’t say anything and he might trigger you again.

His gloves weren’t picking up much, most cuts were partly healed and the bruises were very noticeable. Part of a head-to-toe check is seeing how the victim reacts to the pressure, if you tap their stomach and they flinch it could be internal bleeding or a broken rib, but you weren’t giving any sign of hurt. He knew you could feel the broken bones and the bruises but you would never tell him in the mindset you’re in. he watched for little twitches in the eye or some type of pull away from him wherever he touched, Bucky wanted to reach in and find your brain so that you could tell him what hurts; he wanted to help you so bad.

“Do you know how long you’ve been gone?” Bucky asked as he picked up your left leg, turning and examining it. He found a deep red mark on the edge of a purple bruise on your ankle, there was the exact same one on the other and on your wrists. He pushed away your hair and moved the lab coat back to find a massive bruise with cuts all around your neck, it was impeccable your vocal chords weren’t fried after being put in that cuff contraption.

“Gone from where?” you asked robotically, you didn’t even look at him.

Bucky was taken back by your answer, he stumbled with his hands as he switched legs. “F-from home, y/n. Shield, home?”

“Hydra is my home, it was where I was created.” your head turned to allow your eyes to lock with Bucky’s.

Part of him wanted to scream and shake your head so hard it might knock a memory back in place, he wanted to tell you of your story and how you both grew. Bucky wanted to tell you about the drawings you do with Steve or the boxing in the early mornings, he wanted to overflow you with emotions but he knew they’d hit a brick wall.

Bucky finished his exam but he needed to keep you for himself for a little longer, he pretended to check your pupils and pulse three more times but all he wanted was to feel the warmth of your skin. His eyes would catch the tip of your nose swinging as he moved you slightly, he had an entire set of questions just for that. But he just kept looking at you for no reason. He’d ask if you’re cold and you’d say no, he’d ask if you were hungry and you’d say no. he’d ask if you were thirsty, you’d say no.

So he stopped asking, “drink this water.” He pulled the little water bottle from the back of his belt loop, the little tear drop shaped bottle fit perfectly in her hands.

You grasped the frosted bottle, it seemed familiar to you. You never got water in your cell, you’d have to suck on the floor after the doctor left; they’d always wake you up by dumping ice water on your head. Calloused fingers gripped and felt the bottle, something was happening in your brain that you couldn't quite understand, you were feeling something deep within you.

“Drink.” Bucky said again.

“Wait,” you whispered, all you saw was black form shutting your eyes so tight. You didn’t see Bucky’s face as he waited to see if this water bottle would trigger something from right before you were taken, this was the water bottle you had introduced to the group.

A picture was unfolding in your head, it was a big room with people all around. There was a couch that some were sitting on while one stood in front of them, the one standing was smiling. The people on the couch were leaned in to listen, some held their chin in their hand as they too, were also smiling. The little bottle of water you were holding was also in this picture, the one standing seemed to be presenting it like a game show host, showing it off as if it was new. The picture began to move and the people standing took a seat next to another person, they cuddled close and began whispering to each other with iggles in between. A pen made its way across the couch and ended up at the two who looked like a couple, one wrote a heart next to their name while the other did it normally.

Your eyes shot open at the sound of the pop, you were squeezing the bottle so hard it exploded. Your eyes frantically searched around and when they landed on the other set of eyes in the room you lunged for a hug.

“Bucky!” you screamed, “thank you!” You wrapped your arms around him so tight. Bucky hesitated before clinging to you like a life source, “I thought it would’ve taken you longer,” you sighed into his touch.

“We left you there for too long,” Bucky whispered, his face his deep in your neck.

You pulled away with tears in your eyes, you looked to him but he kept looking down, “is there something on my nose?” you asked, Bucky was looking between your eyes and nose. Your finger went to touch but pulled away at the feeling of something dangling, “what is that?” you screamed and felt it again.

“It’s the injection side effect, I think.” Bucky added he felt around your face to try and see if you were actually real or if this was some sick joke Wanda was playing on him.

“What injection? They just took my blood once so far,” you shrugged and felt the back on your head, “there was a scab there before, it hurts like crazy, like a pulsing thing.'' You brought your other hand back to try and find that scab you felt what seemed like hours ago. Your hair felt dirtier than the last time you remembered, it was one big clump when you moved it.

“Sit down.” Bucky said, you moved back on the seat without a second thought.

With wide eyes you looked up to Bucky, “I didn’t want to sit...Bucky what did you do?” you asked, it looked like you were glued there as you tried to get off.

“What day is it?” Bucky asked cautiously, his hands coming back to cup your face.

“September twenty third, I didn’t hit my head it’s not a con-”

“It's October third.” Bucky breathed out, “oh my god…” he whispered and pulled you into another hug, he gently rubbed your back as you stayed rigid in his hold.

The plane began to drop and Bucky knew it was just landing but with everything rushing against you like a title wave it felt like the plane was crashing. Bucky held you tight as you slashed around in his grip, pleads to any higher power you could think of to keep you alive didn’t seem to work. The plane froze and you stayed gripped to Bucky, he brought you out of the medical room. The three others just looked at you, not wanting to get their hopes up. But when you ran over to them and asked what day it was they seemed to be more disappointed, they just pulled you in for a hug and tried to calm you down like Bucky did.

All at once medical staff open the jet doors, people rushing to you and you. Bucky was trying to cut through the crowd to get to you but medical staff were getting in the way and holding him back, he could see your frantic search for him.

“You’re gonna trigger her, s-stop, this isn’t-”

A medical staff member flew back and knocked a few others over, everyone began to calm down and slow their moments. You were right over the person you pushed trying to help them up, apologizing profusely, they kept moving back and away from you.

“Y-you were holding a needle, I’m sorry.” you eased.

“Sedate her!” another yelled.

You ran down and out of the jet to try and get away from the many needles that, what seemed like, every medical member was holding. There was just noise surrounding you, vision began to tunnel right when the pounding in your ears began, at the back of your head there seemed to be a knife stabbing you.

“Get a gurney!” the voice cut through the shouts and chasing.

Everything stopped and you froze from your worried state to complete your mission, someone ordered you to find a gurney, you must complete it. There was one waiting outside, you walked over with your back straight and your chin up. There was no need to look behind you shoulder but you did so anyway to make sure no threats were also in need of the gurney, everyone behind you was just still and watched you. This must be a test, after that realization you did everything quickly and efficiently to avoid punishment.

When you brought the gurney to the voice who shouted it they told you to get on as well, Bucky was by your side and offering an arm to help get on but you didn’t take it. People were shouting orders to one another and you kept trying to get up to fulfill the command but Bucky kept holding you down. Some medical staff were trying to shove him away but he stood his ground and kept a hand holding you.

“Why do I keep wanting to do all these things?” you frantically aske as you tried to stand again.

“I’ll explain later, don’t worry,” he squeezed your hand as you made it into your exam room. Hands felt all around you, the lab coat was long forgotten so you sat on the table naked. Bucky was right against the wall and kept an eye on you, though your brain was next to scrambled eggs he could still read you like a book.

“We need to take some blood, might also need to give something to sedate her.” it was, what looked like, the head of this team that spoke.

Another picture flashed before your eyes. The needles and this blue liquid that went into you. Bucky had told you something called ‘ice’ but you didn’t know what that meant. Blood would be taken from you then without you looking, they would stick whatever serum Bucky was talking about in your arm. Voices and sounds rushed into your head as these pictures moved and changed to show that you weren’t there for as long as you thought you were, in your mind a different doctor repeated the same motions over and over and over again. You were covered in water and somebody was talking over you from inside of the cell, their voice seemed as though they too were underwater so you couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but one part stood out. They were saying how they did this all without you noticing, how you were too confident, how you were strong and yet you’d look away from the needles when they were stuck into your arm.

All of these people who you failed to remember that were surrounding you now, all had needles and some had already taken your blood, but you were going to be cautious now, you were going to be aware because you didn’t want to forget everything again. Before anyone could stick anything else in you, your arms flew out to the side and gripped as many syringes as you could, they were smashed to the ground and the clear liquid spilled and dripped on the floor. People were beginning to hold you down but you broke free from their dead grass pushing away the velcro straps that were about to go around your ankles and wrists.

Someone managed to get a strap on your left ankle without you noticing, that sensation of being cuffed made another picture float in your mind. It was a large metal contraption with silver Cuban links and five cuffs, two around your wrists, two around your ankles, and the final one went around your neck. Once they were all attached to you, you were suspended in the air as your entire body weight was being held up by your limbs and neck, even though only one bound was attached to you now, you could still feel the weight of all of it crashing back onto you.

With one large tug the Velcro cuff snapped, you tried to get up and off the table to run to Bucky, he was the only one left in the room that you knew and trusted. He was also trying to make his way to you simultaneously, reading the fear etched deep into your eyes. No medical staff was trying to hold him back so he ripped through all of them and got to you quickly, you couldn’t really hear what he was saying because the pounding in your head that was pinpointed right at the back of your neck was starting to pound into your ears. But you could make out his lips that were moving, you can remember faintly kissing them, the feeling was on the tip of your tongue but you couldn’t quite make out what it really felt like. He was telling you it was going to be okay, at one point he said that you could sleep now and that he’d be there when you wake up, you really didn’t want to trust him but you were so tired and your head hurt so bad.

You didn’t even see or feel the syringe plunge deep into the crook of your neck as he held your face and made your eyes look right into his.

Winter Makes Ice tag list: @small-death-and-codeine @commonintrest @buckyys-doll @lil-baby-nor

let me know if you want a tag!!!

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kashimos-hajime · 5 years

Text

cookies and rings and things | b.b.

summary: “What do you want for Christmas?” “I’ve got everything I want right here.”

WARNINGS: swearing, but it’s all soft, cute and just love!!! lots of love :) pairing: bucky barnes x fem!reader word count: 8.3k

a/n: written for @sunmoonandbucky for no particular reason other than i saw that she needed fluff and i was more than happy to provide. make sure y’all show her some love bc she just ACED AN AUDITION and literally,, i love her,,, so much,,, NOW HAS A SEQUEL TITLED: POSITIVELY PERFECT

“How much do you love me?” she asks, winter gleaming on her bare skin and firelight playing in her eyes. It’s Boxing Day of 2024, the first truly normal one after the Blip, and Bucky watches as snow falls like feathersoft stars outside his window at the compound.

“Count the snowflakes, multiply by a million.”

“Big number,” she muses and he can feel her nails scratch at his waist lightly as her socked feet nudge against his. He wonders what kinda insane person wears socks without any clothes on, but then decides that it’s the kind of person who’s fallen in love with him.

“Well, I love you more than that,” he replies. She wrinkles her nose and snuggles in tighter against him. The fur lining of those ridiculous reading socks tickle the inside of his calf as she curls against him and he doesn’t think he should be able to love a girl this much. Then, he can feel the cold metal of the ring she slid onto her own finger less than twenty-four hours ago and realizes that he had thought a lot of things shouldn’t be possible, and yet they still are.

“Dork,” she murmurs against his neck.

“Lover,” he replies against her ear.

Bucky doesn’t mean to notice her. He’s running laps around the newly rebuilt compound, she has a whistle in her mouth as she shouts drills around the metal thing. Sharp cracks of ‘Pick up the pace!’ and ‘Move it, kids!’ nip at his ears when he runs by and Sam says something about how he’s getting distracted. He hadn’t realized at all.

“Who’s she?” he asks, wiping the sweat from his brow. He’s just finished five laps and he stands on the inner edge of the track, watching as recruits run past. A towel is slung over his shoulder and Sam skids to a stop in front of him, stepping in beside the soldier. The rookies’ shirts are soaked and they pant as they whip past, but none dare to slow down when she stands waiting just a few metres away.

“New trainer.” Sam’s got a glint in his eye Bucky thinks he knows when he says her name. He’s just getting to know the guy but he’s a pretty easy book to read anyway. “Heard she’s a hard ass on the newbies but it’s ‘cause she has a rep.”

“Then they’re getting what they signed up for,” he says shortly. Despite the cool autumn breeze brushing against the thick heat of his neck, his heart burns into his chest as he heaves another breath.

“Alright, walk it off. We meet by the pool in fifteen.” She catches their attention again, and Bucky notices she’s wearing a half-zipped up windbreaker and joggers, and nothing underneath. Not that he intends to notice. Her hair is tied up back, and he kinda can’t help but look at her neck and her collarbones and, oh, no, he’s looking at her black sports bra—

“Dude.” He blinks at Sam’s amused snap. “You’re staring.”

“Shut up.” Bucky’s voice roughens up as his cheeks begin to flash red and he hides his face in his towel when Sam nudges him with a sweaty elbow.

“She’s cute. I can get you her number,” Sam says but Bucky lets out such a strangled sound that both Sam and the cute trainer look at him.

If it were possible, Bucky’s skin would melt off.

“Hey,” Sam calls her over by a name Bucky can barely hear because he’s too busy staring at his feet and wishing the ground would swallow him up. “You’re the new trainer, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is so much softer than before. Guess it’s like that when you’re not yelling at recruits and talking to Avengers. Bucky raises his head, absently running a hand through the few strands of hair that’ve fallen from his ponytail. “You’re Sam, right? I feel like we’ve met before.” She cocks her eyebrow and tilts her head. “Did you use to live in Washington?”

“Yeah, I did.” Sam’s smile pinches his cheeks and Bucky’s lips press together in a displeased frown when a grin flickers across her face. “Did you work in the VA? ‘Cause you’re starting to look familiar.”

“Yeah.” When she smiles, it morphs her face into something startling warm and lovely. Bucky dips his head low, trying to act like he’s not really part of the conversation—a mere bystander—because if he looks at her for too long, he knows it’s just too intense to be anything but creepy. “I think we used to bump into each other at the gym. I was a physical therapist at the office, and—”

“You made cookies any chance you got, I remember now!” Sam exclaims and she laughs loudly. “You always made my vets’ day when your cookies came in, so thank you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m here now. It’s funny how life works.” She shrugs and Bucky can feel her gaze land on him. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met.” Her name slips off her tongue like poetry and Bucky, midway through a swipe of sweat down his neck, looks at her with narrowed eyes. He doesn’t mean to glare, but he’s caught so off-guard by the sudden change in direction of their conversation that he isn’t even a part of that his face reverts to something less than friendly.

“Bucky,” he says stiffly, although he doesn’t know why she doesn’t know the names of every Avenger. She probably does and is just being polite, a stern voice in Bucky’s head reprimands and he can feel Sam almost sigh in disappointment. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too. You haven’t tried my cookies yet, so I haven’t proven my worth but I promise they’ll change your life,” she says, completely unphased. Bucky guesses she’s more than used to grumpy guys. “Fall equinox is tomorrow, so wait just a tiny bit longer?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Bucky doesn’t understand the question at the end of her sentence but she seems satisfied with his answer as she shoves her hands into the pockets of her windbreaker. “You probably have to get back to work,” he adds lamely and she turns to look at the compound. The autumn breeze curls hair against her cheek and Bucky bites his lip to resist the urge.

“I’m free later tonight,” she says, eyes squinting a bit when she turns back to Bucky and Sam clears his throat when Bucky himself doesn’t say a word. It’s like he’s drowning in her eyes. There’s something so effortlessly patient and warm in her gaze that Bucky can’t help but just… rest. It’s almost as if he can rest in her presence.

“So is Barnes.”

“What?” He snaps back to reality harshly, as usual. “We’re supposed to—“

“Actually, I can handle it on my own. She, however—” At this, Sam gestures wildly to the trainer who stands there, the beginnings of an amused grin growing on her face—“needs help with cookies.”

“I can’t,” he croaks after a minute of stuttering, and he simply clamps his mouth shut, averting his eyes. She’s too pretty for him.

“I mean, company is always welcome,” she says, but he shakes his head.

“I’ll just get in your way and I don’t wanna mess up your cookies.”

“You can’t mess them up. I always think of something and it always works out.” She reaches over to take hold of his flesh arm and despite the coolness of the day when they’re not running their lungs out, her hand burns against his skin. She gently squeezes his elbow. “Don’t worry so much, okay? I’ll be in the kitchen after dinner in the mess.”

She lets go too soon and slips her hand back into her pocket as Bucky opens his mouth to reply.

“I’ve got to go to the pool,” she says, jerking her head towards the compound. Her eyes flicker to Sam whose grin nearly splits his face. “Bye, Sam. It was nice seeing you again, although I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other now.”

“Big building,” he says with a shrug. “Who knows?” She chuckles lightly, and then her gaze slides to Bucky.

Her eyes just seem to find his so calmly. It’s magnetic, and if he believed in love at first sight, this would be it.

“See you later, Sergeant.” She magpie salutes and he can’t help but mimic like a monkey, a lazy swipe of his finger from his brow. It’s so relaxed, so slow and he’s slouched on one hip, his metal hand on his towel, that he thinks he’s never felt so light. It’s almost routine—he could get used to this.

Man, it’s so easy with her.

Her smile brightens remarkably and she heads back to the compound with a little spring in her step.

Sam waits until she’s inside before grabbing Bucky by the neck and giving him a noogie.

“You gotta dress up nice, man,” Sam advises like he’s on the same level as Tan from Queer Eye. Bucky stares at his reflection in the floor-length mirror and frowns in response.

“We’re baking, not going to a gala.” Maybe I should take her to one. Get invited to enough of them as it is, a part of him muses, but he quickly chases that thought of his head. “Besides, she just saw us earlier today sweating like dogs so I don’t really think she’ll care if I show up in a t-shirt and shorts.”

“But this is your first date, man. You gotta dress to impress.” Sam shuffles through Bucky’s closet whilst its owner gapes at him.

“It’s not a date.”

“Yeah, and I’m not Captain America.”

“Shut up, Sam.” Bucky catches the pair of dark washed jeans and a cozy little sweater Wanda said would be cute on him. Glancing at his reflection in the mirror, he sighs. The warm white and the dark blue are so not his style. His style is black in different shades and fabrics and he is going to kill Sam. “This? I’ll look like—”

“Husband material. You’ll look like a straight up husband. She will cuff you on the spot,” Sam declares much to Bucky’s annoyance. “Are you gonna wear the photostatic veil Banner programmed for you?” He glances over to see Sam holding the mesh of tech, and he frowns thoughtfully.

“Should I?” He hasn’t had the opportunity to try it on, and although he knows everyone is used to his metal arm… He sighs. This is way more complicated than the forties. “Yeah. Good impression, right?” he says lamely and Sam claps him on the back, helping him seal it to his metal arm. As the nano-sized cells connect to the metal plates, a fleshy color blooms from the shoulder down and he feels like silk brushes against the tiny fibers of his arm. He can feel every single little cell, buzzing in a way that’s barely even noticeable. Bucky hopes that when he doesn’t focus on it, it’ll fade into the back of his mind.

“Atta boy. Come on. We’ve got dinner and then it’s time for your date! Wanda made paprikash.”

“Great,” Bucky intones dully, nerves biting at his stomach. He has no appetite for this. “I love paprikash.”

“We don’t sulk on first dates, Barnes.”

“It’s not a fucking date!”

After a dinner full of questions from Dr. Banner on how the photostatic veil was feeling and from everyone else on why, Bucky volunteers to do the dishes and clean up to make sure everything is spotless for when she comes in. Despite confusion among the rest of his colleagues, Sam assures them that ‘this is the plan, guys. Barnes’s got a hot date coming over.’

This, of course, only results in Bucky threatening to throw a skillet at him.

He wipes down the countertops, cleans the sink, and reorganizes the fridge while he waits for her, and he absently wonders what kind of cookies she intends to make. Chocolate chip, jam, sugar, shortbread…

Ingredients! His eyes widen and he turns to look at the dark pantries in slight horror. I should probably get them out for her. And measuring spoons, that’s what she needs, right? His stomach is in knots as he runs around the kitchen island, trying to find all the tools they might need. He tries to think of when Wanda had last made something sweet—what had she used? He ducks to pull out the biggest drawer, relieved to find three metal bowls of different sizes.

“Small, medium, large,” he murmurs under his breath, and he puts them all out beside the other instruments he thinks might be needed. A whisk, a bunch of different spoons, a glass cup and metal scoops… He glances around and tries to figure out what he’s missed before deciding to just open up every possible drawer and cupboard, and see what pricks his imagination.

He only gets to the second set of drawers when a soft chuckle catches his attention.

Whipping around, he feels his heart drop into his stomach when he spots her leaning against the doorframe. Her hair is pulled away from her face, and she has a book and aprons hugged tight to her chest.

“I didn't want to disturb you,” she says, an impish curl to her mouth. Bucky steps back from the kitchen island as she walks around and her gaze sweeps his collection. “It was cute.”

“Not many people can sneak up on me,” he says, a bit defensive as a flush makes its way up his neck. He doesn’t mean to sound like it, but maybe it’s the embarrassment of being caught that makes him oddly proud of his work.

“Not many people help me bake cookies,” she replies, standing next to him. She sets down the book and aprons down and he can catch the faint whiff of dinner at the mess hall clinging to her t-shirt. His heart hammers hard enough he’s sure even the deaf would be able to hear it as she gently plucks at different tools, thinking about what they will and won’t need.

Not the thing that looks like a weird wire version of brass knuckles, got it.

“Uh, pastry cutter,” she names, returning it to its place without a mistake. “We won’t really need it since we’re not cutting up big portions of fat.”

“Good to know.” He nods and writes that down in his head. “Anything else we don’t need?”

“We can use it all if you want,” she says with a laugh living in her voice. “It doesn’t really make any difference to me.”

“Okay, well, let’s just get started, then.”

“Aprons first.” She unfolds the two things, one white and navy, and the other black. The black one says Kiss the Cook and Bucky feels a flash of heat at the print. “Which one?”

The white and navy striped apron has a blue pocket with tiny white polka dots, the same pattern frilling the bottom and on the shoulder straps. The black, it’s clearly larger and for a man, and Bucky wonders if these were truly the only aprons she had or if she only bakes with guys she’s interested in. A flicker of jealousy runs through him. How many guys cooked with her before him?

Stop it. Not a date. Bucky shakes his head and shrugs.

“Whatever looks best on you,” he says. “Not that either of them would look bad or anything, but—”

“Thanks, Sarge.” Her eyes crinkle when she smiles big enough and she slips the black apron over her neck before sticking out the white and navy one to him. He stares at the piece of fabric for a moment before slipping his arms through and twisting his arms to tie a tight knot. She does the same and it’s pulled tight against her, Kiss the Chef smack in the middle of her chest.

“So where do we start?” He swallows because he thinks he’s just signed up for more than he bargained for. He looks at all these raw ingredients, ingredients he’s pulled because he thought it might be useful and doesn’t even know where to begin.

“First, we have to decide how many cookies and which type,” she says, pulling over the book and making space for it. She opens it up and his eyes widen at all the tabs poking out, different colours surely meaning different things. It’s an organized mess.

With a piece of scrap paper and a pencil, she writes down the number of required cookies. “Around there,” she says with a swift circle around a number bigger than Bucky had thought. “And these are the cookies we can make that everyone can eat,” she continues, writing a list down one side and then sectioning it off with a line, “these include nuts,” another section, “and these will have icing on them.”

“That’s a lot of planning for the fall equinox, ma’am,” he begins, trying not to sound daunted. She laughs, her eyes darting to his face. Her stare burns into his cheek as she shrugs.

“Hope I’m not scaring you away.”

No. Never. “Maybe a little.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll do the math and teach you a few tricks, and you’ll be a natural. Promise.” He’s surprised by how easily he believes her. As she talks about all the different types of cookies, the textures and ingredients one can use, Bucky finds himself slipping. He lets her scoot closer as she shows him how to sift the dry ingredients.

“Just tap it against your hand like this,” she says and Bucky copies her. She shows him how to prep the pan, and he preheats the oven. They mix the dough with their hands, and Bucky watches as her skilled hands manipulate the oily dough she’s created like it’s second nature. He glances down at his own pile in a glass bowl that doesn’t look too shabby, and almost smiles. “Yours looks really good, Bucky.”

“Thanks.” His eyes stick to the chocolate chips and he pokes it with a half-proud smile. “I had a great teacher.” She laughs again. She’s easy to laugh and smile, and every time she does either of those things, something in him feels like it’s going to burst with light. He wishes he was like that, but at the same time, he feels brighter than he has in days. Maybe it’s something about how she treats him like any other guy, or maybe it’s that she makes him smile more than anyone has in a while.

“Well, this is only batch one and two out of like, twenty billion,” she says as they begin to shape their cookies. Bucky had ripped the parchment paper for their trays and laid them flat and while they roll these balls of chocolate chip cookie dough, he can’t help but listen to her go on and on about things she wants to talk about. Life since the Blip, the recruits, hobbies and childhood memories. He can’t help but give his two cents too, and she tilts her head as she listens, a soft smile on her face.

“You’re a great listener,” she comments as he sets the trays in the oven and closes the door. She sets the timer on her phone and begins to prepare for the next batch.

“It was all I could do for a while,” he says with a shrug. “You get good at stuff you do for a long time.” Her actions slow and she turns to stare at him. He focuses on cleaning up his work space, swallowing down the smell of butter and sugar. “Guess something came out of it,” he adds uncomfortably when the silence grows. He looks beside him, at her, where there is a smear of flour across her cheek, where she merely stands there in silence, and sighs. He’s ruined it. “Sorry.”

“Is that why you hid your hand?” she asks softly and his eyes widen noticeably. “I didn’t want to ask to make you uncomfortable, but I did wonder.” She looks down to make sure she’s measuring enough sugar and she closes her eyes for a moment, clearly cursing herself. Bucky wishes he could say something, but his mouth doesn’t click with his brain. “Forget I even brought it up. I’m sorry, I—”

“I wore it for tonight,” he blurts out and she looks at him, eyebrows furrowed together. “It’s a photostatic veil Banner coded for me and… and I wore it for you.”

“Why? It’s not like I’m afraid of it.”

You should be. “I guess I just wanted to be normal for a night,” he sighs and she stops sifting for a moment to really look at him. Setting down the sieve, she leans on the counter and places the other hand on her hip, waiting for him to explain patiently. “Sam called it a date, and I think it got to my head.”

“Oh,” she breathes. He tears off the photostatic veil carefully, letting the mesh crumple in his hands and she swallows. The air is thick with an emotion neither of them can quite name and Bucky is quite sure she will never want to see him again. God, is this what it’s like to flunk a date? He sets down the mesh on a clean countertop, watching the hologram flicker as he flexes his metal fingers. They gleam in the artificial light and he hides it behind his back, shame pooling in his chest.

“I’m so sorry. I… I didn’t want to make it awkward for you,” he mutters and she reaches to touch his metal wrist tentatively. Kiss the Chef wrinkles against her chest and his gaze falls to the floor. He doesn’t quite know how to describe how utterly disappointed in himself he is when she steps closer, fingers curling over his. No pity in her eyes, she squeezes his palm carefully.

“I don’t want you hiding yourself away,” she murmurs, tilting her head so he is forced to look at her. His eyes stare dejectedly into hers and she smiles, using her other hand to cup his face. Powder dusts against his eyes and he squints. The smell of dough clings to her skin and she smiles fondly at him, fingers stroking his cheek. “I like you just as you are.”

“You like me?” he asks, confused, and she chuckles. “All I’ve done is help you make cookies.”

“‘Course I like you, dork. You’re hot.” A teasing bite in her tone, she taps his nose with her thumb before returning her palm to his cheek. “And I know you didn’t have control of anything in your past, and you’re trying your best, Bucky. That’s all any of us can do, now that we’re back.” Her eyes avert for a moment, and then find his again. There is a gooey softness that reminds him of molten chocolate and snow on Christmas eve. “I really do like you, you know. Have a big ol’ school girl crush on you, to be honest.”

“On me?” Why not anyone else? He’s bewildered. Sam, or that new receptionist on two, or even some other trainer because…

Frankly, Bucky thinks he’s lost all appeal to those who know him since 1945.

She takes his silence as rejection and it shows in the uncertainty that mars her face. Bucky wishes he knew how to articulate that he is insanely attracted to her and how the way she laughs makes his heart believe it can jump mountains, but instead he is stunned into a quiet that fills the kitchen. He only met her a few hours ago. How can he even begin to explain it?

“We have cookies to make,” he says instead, eyes flitting to the open ingredients and he turns his head against her hand. She springs apart from him, cold rushing to fill in the space she’s left behind as she draws her hands towards herself.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess we do.” Her face falls and she grabs the sieve, a wobbly smile built on her lips. “Forget I brought it up, then.” She begins to sift her dry ingredients once again and he mentally groans to himself. Why is he such an idiot?

He mumbles her name softly, and she pauses, turning just so to look at him.

“I like you, too,” he says with a difficulty that shouldn’t be there, because it’s true. “I know I just met you today, but you’ve already made me feel… different, I guess”

“Different?” A tentative, stronger smile begins to curl the corner of her mouth and he nods, his lips twitching upwards. His hand, flesh and warm, settles on her hip all on its own, a fluttering touch that he is completely unsure of as he gently turns her to face him fully. She’s so damn gorgeous with flour on her face and eye bags beneath her eyes that he’s sure she will inevitably make his heart burst. It pounds in his head as he tries to grab at reasons he needs to step away, to stay away, but his heart battles his head ferociously.

I’ll hurt you and I can’t stand the thought. I’ll hurt you or kill you or lose control and you can’t stop me and I don’t want to hurt you ever. His brain screams the words H.Y.D.R.A had thrown at him, the looks handlers had tossed at him flashing in his head—terrified, wild dog, monster.

I want to protect you, I want to love you, you light me up, I can protect you. I won’t hurt you. I’ll be better for you, if you could love someone like me. His heart whispers, louder than the silence. It’s the forties boy in him, the son his mama raised and the brother Rebecca loved, and he can recall the faces he’s adored—Steve, Ma, Becca.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Bucky murmurs and she hesitantly touches his face. His eyes flutter at her gentle touch and she takes it as an invitation to cup his face once again. “It’s just… you.”

“I’m not special,” she tells him bashfully, words brushing against his lips as he closes his eyes for a moment against her hand. When he opens them once again, he finds her watching, transfixed. There is a new serenity in her eyes, one that tells him she is completely enchanted on something that cannot be him—he is anything but an angel.

“You really are.”

“Now, now, Sergeant Barnes.” Her voice is warm as whiskey and he can get drunk off the sound of her laugh. He can feel her smile just by how her energy shifts and Bucky falls, for the first time in his life; he falls harder than he ever has. “Go on like that and you’ll get anything you want from me.”

“Even permission to kiss the chef?” Bucky’s words, thick and hot, jumble in his mouth. Her nose brushes his, sparks tingling in his veins as her hand trails to cusp the back of his neck.

“That permission will always be granted without question.”

He kisses her softly, hesitance laced through his lips and it is only when she crushes him against her does he bury his hand in his hair and kiss her like she is meant to be kissed: feverently, reverently, forever reminded that Bucky Barnes is lucky enough to be completely in love with her.

Bucky is quite sure Sam is in love with his girlfriend in the fact that he’s in love with the fact that his girlfriend is possibly in love with Bucky. Bucky himself doesn’t think that she could possibly be in love with him, but Sam is more than eager to prove otherwise.

“Sam asked what I’m getting everyone for Christmas.” She’s on the shoulder press, the muscles in her back flexing and waning in a slick sheen of sweat while Bucky completes his set of push-ups.

“He’s thinking too far ahead,” he mutters. “It’s only the start of November.”

“Well, you know him. I think he just wants an opinion on what I’m getting you.” Standing up, she grabs her water bottle, squirting a stream of ice-cold water into her mouth before laying down beside him. “What do you want for Christmas?”

He pauses mid-way up from his two-hundredth push-up. “You don’t need to get me anything, doll.” The nickname is still a bit strange on his tongue but he thinks he can get used to it.

“Yeah, but I wanna get you something.” She juts out her bottom lip in an adorable pout, a telltale sign she wants him to kiss her and he leans on one hand to press a quick kiss onto her lips before resuming his workout. He knows the signs on what she wants fairly easily now. He’s grateful she’s spelt it out so many times for him.

Playing with his fingers means she wants attention, a pout is a kiss, suctioning kisses to the neck means she’s feeling some sorta way and he’s more than happy to oblige that feeling. There’s a long list of little tells that Bucky’s starting to think it’s a whole other language.

“How about cookies?” he deflects and she rolls her eyes, getting up and sucking down some more water.

“I make cookies for everyone. You deserve something special,” she argues and he sighs. “I really want to make our first Christmas special.” He lies down and pushes on his palms, stretching out in a cobra pose while she rolls over into the splits. He pulls back into child’s pose while she leans forward and he’s thankful for the silence.

What do I want? he wonders. What do I want that I don’t have already? His eyes drift to her form only a few centimetres away and he thinks, Nothing.

“I’ve got everything I want right here,” he intones seriously, crawling forward and she turns to him, eyes wide. Sitting upright, she changes legs. “I guess I want nothing to change.”

“Dork,” she mumbles, and a sticky heat pools in his face as she pokes his cheek. He sits down and she offers him his water bottle with a shake. He shakes his head, the argument that his own is only in the locker room. “Come on. Locker room’s too far away from me.” A sweat drop tracks down her jaw and he smiles softly, brushing it away. Legs crossed, he takes it without taking a sip. “Besides, I told you you can take what you want. I don’t mind.”

“Okay,” he says, knowing full well it just doesn’t feel right to take back the hoodies she’s stolen from him. Maybe one by one, he’ll take them back and wear them for at least twenty four hours before giving them back. Then, his scent will stay with her. “What do you want for Christmas, then?”

“I—” Her sentence is cut off by an alert on his phone, one they both know not to ignore and she sighs. There is disappointment, their little bubble popped with a simple text. He sets down her water bottle to get it, gut dropping at the message displayed on his screen. “How long is it?”

“Emergency response in Cairo, I don’t know,” he murmurs. Pocketing his phone, he grabs his towel and rushes back to her. He grabs her face and presses a desperate kiss against her mouth, eyes squeezing shut and she mumbles words he can’t decipher against his grieving lips. Her fingers touch his jaw gently, a reminder that he must go, and he pulls away. “I’ll text you as soon as I can.”

“Stay safe.”

He smiles shakily and promises that he will.

“Barnes. We got a package for you.” Sharon Carter’s voice catches his attention from his sniper post and he blinks away the winter sun from his eyes. No movement still. “Merry Christmas.”

The blonde extends a box towards him, a slight smile curling her lips and he frowns at the stark bleakness of it. Black, and absorbing no light, it feels heavier than he thought it’d be.

“Thanks.” He shifts, his bones clicking as he glances out the tiny slit of a window. There hasn’t been movement for weeks. Crossing his legs, he sets the box before him and a tiny blue hologram pops up from a tiny hole in the center. His eyebrows furrow together as it scans his face and he squints.

“Facial scan complete: Hello, James Buchanan Barnes.”

F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice echoes in his small little perch and he still thinks it’s weird without having the side effect of Stark in his suit chasing after him to hear the A.I. but he shoves that uncomfortable feeling of the dead man out of his head. That is too much regret to unpack right now on a mission.

The box unfolds, the mechanical whir humming in his ears and a waft of sweet sugar rushes into his face as he peers within.

Cookies. Sugar cookies, butter cookies, frosting and crystal sprinkles, gingerbread, snickerdoodle, a note in her writing.

“She requested I ask you to read her note before eating the treats,” F.R.I.D.A.Y. says and Bucky pulls out her note. “She also requested that you stay safe, despite not being home for Christmas.”

Taking the blue cue card, he sighs at the mere sight of her writing. His heart aches much more than he realized and he wonders if she misses him half as much as he misses her.

Buck,

Times may be tough while we’re apart, but absence only makes the heart grow fonder. Stay safe, Sarge, and come back to me.

Merry Christmas. Forever thinking of you.

When he bites into one of those cookies, he melts into the wall he’s leaning to and closes his eyes, just imagining her standing in the kitchen with that Kiss the Chef apron tied tightly around her. The taste brings back memories, and brings him back home to New York, to her. Home, he muses wistfully, home is waiting for me with her laugh and smell and eyes. Home.

Bucky drops his bags as soon as he’s off the quinjet because he spots the dark blur that is his girlfriend in a track pants and a big poofy parka running down the road towards him. He barely gets his arms up in time before she’s flying into his arms and he lets out a grunt, stumbling back as he flings his arms around her waist and holds onto her tightly. Her legs squeeze his waist as she burrows her head into his neck and Sam laughs as he unpacks the equipment.

“Bucky,” she says, pulling back and his arms hold her to him still, gently supporting her back and her bottom. Her hand cups her face and she brushes hair out of his face, tracing a healing cut on his lip. “You’re home.” She embraces him again, thighs tightening as if she’s afraid to see him leave again and he merely closes his eyes, letting the first day of 2024 snow against his skin. “You’re home.”

“I’m home, lover,” he promises, and she laughs, face wet when she steps back onto solid ground again. He opens his eyes to admire her, a vision; a sight for sore eyes from the arms length he holds her at. The snow melts as it lands on her skin but it nestles in her hair, a frame of white for her pretty face that he’s missed far too much. “God, I’m home.”

She laughs, a watery smile surfacing as she leans up to kiss him. They are rapid, wet with emotion and she smiles against his lips, just laughing in relief. “I love you so much,” she whispers and he blinks, drawing back. Her face is the epitome of happiness as he gawks at her and she wipes at her eyes. “You don’t have to say it back, but I just… I love you.” She doesn’t look afraid, only confident in her feelings for him and he scoops her up, his heart bursting with sunlight.

“I love you, too,” he whispers into her ear, embracing her tightly. She lets out a tiny exhale at his strength but hugs him back tightly anyway. What is love if not hugs that barely allow you to breathe and kisses until you’re dizzy? Bucky doesn’t know. “God, I love you.”

Bucky learns a lot dating her.

She hums when she cuts his hair—which she does every so often—and likes to cuddle in her sleep. She bakes for every occasion she can think of and likes to spoil Bucky rotten. Although their jobs often keep them apart during the day, Bucky likes to just watch her in her environment, ordering the recruits around.

She has a different sport she favours for every season. Jogging in the fall, hockey in the winter, tennis in the spring and swimming in the summer. More often than not, she drags a happy Bucky with her to the rec centre and he’s more than happy to participate, whether he shows it or not.

She expresses her feelings through cooking, which Bucky has learnt the hard way. One time, they got into an argument over something stupid—he can’t even remember what started it—and came to the kitchen at 2AM to see her sitting at the kitchen island crying her eyes out and surrounded by baskets of muffins.

“Lover,” he had called out softly, already too loud for the eerie time between midnight and morning. “You’ve got a bit of a muffin problem.”

“I know,” she had replied dejectedly. “I don’t know what to do with all of it, Buck.”

They had donated it to shelters around the city, going on their own from street to street with baskets full of muffins. It becomes ritual, to have days where they bring baked goods and homemade meals to those who need it.

She doesn’t really know how to take care of herself, based on how she treats herself during assessment season, so Bucky has to pick up her slack and feed her more than caffeine. He feeds her diets that are balanced and healthy, and makes meals that he learns in his spare time to share with her while she shouts herself raw at the soldiers.

He remembers her favourite foods and music, and knows just how to put an exhausted girl to bed with makeup and bra off. He remembers to write when he’s gone for too long during missions, and he remembers her birthday, favourite colour, and which show she’s currently obsessing over. He always downloads the seasons to catch up so he understands what she’s talking about.

It’s safe to assume he knows when to propose, hell, he’d been ready the night they first baked together, but he just has to remember to catch her ring size. There’s so much of his mind cluttered with these useless yet utterly adorable facts about her that he can’t bring himself to delete, that it’s always the one thing he forgets to do.

Here is where his friends come in.

They’re all hanging in the lounge on a lazy autumn day. Their one year anniversary is coming up and Bucky and Sam are watching football while she talks to Wanda about potential plans.

“Popcorn,” Sam says without tearing his eyes off the screen, shoving the bowl in their general direction. Bucky grabs it unceremoniously, popping a few into his mouth while she twists in his grip to pass the bowl to Wanda.

“I have cookies cooling, boys,” she warns them and Wanda chuckles. The witch puts the bowl back on the table next to the empty nacho plate while Bucky’s girlfriend decides to curl against him, and his arm around her waist squeezes her close. His hand trails down to her thigh, hoisting her legs up while she peppers kisses on the underside of his jaw.

“I don’t understand anything about this game,” Wanda intones once commercials hit, amused when Sam lets out a shout of disappointment. Beeping from the kitchen, a timer, breaks whatever retort he was prepared to throw back at the Sokovian and Bucky lets out a whine when his girlfriend unwinds from his lap to get up.

“Sorry, babe, but I gotta get them before they get too cold,” she says and Bucky frowns before nodding. He cups the back of her neck, and she kisses him quickly before pulling away and skipping to the kitchen. Wanda immediately crawls into the space on the other side of Bucky on the couch, pulling out her phone while Sam leans over to whisper.

“She sends me pictures all the time,” Wanda begins nefariously and Sam pulls out a strip of paper, a line in pencil across it. As he rolls it up into a ring, Wanda leans over to show Bucky pictures of the girls’ conversation. “She adores all of them, but she cannot decide.”

“And here you go, man.” Sam gives the paper ring to Bucky. “Got it while she was taking a nap.”

“She wants silver rather than gold,” Wanda says.

“And she doesn’t care about a venue.”

“But she likes the idea of a seasonal wedding.”

“Dude, she wants your babies.”

“She wants two or three kids.”

Bucky’s head begins to spin as they continue to bombard him with facts or proof that she actually wants to spend a life with him, and he blinks, staring at the commercials that still flash in his face. Grabbing Wanda’s phone, he focuses on the images that his girlfriend had sent the witch, gorgeous silver rings with diamonds, some with less, some with more, and simply tunes the two out, trying to internally decide what he should buy her. Meanwhile, Sam and Wanda have fallen into some argument about whether or not Bucky’s wedding is going to be a summer or winter wedding, when a new voice pierces the air.

“Who wants cookies?”

Immediately, a hush falls over them. Bucky tears his eyes away from the phone just as Wanda snatches it back just in time for her to appear, striding into the room with the smell of cookies rushing in after her. She sends them an odd glance, and the trio of Avengers merely separate as she sets down the plate. A fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies are stacked ontop of a porcelain plate and Sam lunges forward to grab one while she picks one up delicately and resumes her place on Bucky’s lap.

“What were you three talking about?” she asks, amused, and he takes the cookie with a click of his mechanical arm. She tucks her head underneath his chin while his hand goes back to her thigh and he bites into the cookie.

“Nothing you gotta worry about,” he says. The game starts again and she can’t pipe up to argue without Sam telling them to shut up, so she doesn’t. Instead, she rests her head on his chest and Bucky hopes she doesn’t hear his heart beating like crazy in his chest.

By the tiny smile he can feel against his chest, she can hear it.

Bucky holds the ring in his pocket for four months.

He had bought it the very next day after the football game because if he had let it sit, the nerves would’ve gotten to him, but now, new nerves are causing him to become paranoid: waiting for the perfect moment, scared that she’ll find out.

He thinks the proposal should be grand and all about how much he loves her and how much she’s shown him and loved him and it needs to be perfect. It is anything but that.

“Morning,” she whispers as her eyes flutter open. She’s laying against him in their comfy, toasty bed, and he doesn’t want to move for Christmas festivities except they both have to—a charity breakfast for veterans where Bucky is speaking, then a novice hockey game because his girlfriend just had to teach the cutest little seven year old boys how to utterly destroy their opponents, and then dinner.

He traces shapes along the slope of her back lazily, craning his head to look at him and she smiles dazedly.

“Hey, lover.” He grins easier now, and when his smile splits his face, her own does too. “We’ve got a day ahead of us.”

“A day that’s way too long for Christmas,” she mumbles, closing her eyes and pressing her cheek against his chest. “Convince me to get up.” It’s still dark outside, a blissful 5AM full of snow delicately fluttering outside their window. He wraps a leg around her waist, pulling her close while she dozes and she lets out a contented sigh at his arm draped over her side.

“Don’t want to,” he replies, eyes closing. “Want you to stay right here with me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Kinda want to stay here forever,” he continues drowsily, eyes fluttering shut and she shakes in his arms with a silent laugh. “Wish everyday could be like this.”

“You wake up earlier, and maybe it could be,” she retorts. Of course the early bird in her is perfect for her morning drills with her recruits, but Bucky prefers to sleep in like the owl he is, and he lets out a snort, kissing her hairline. “Just saying.”

“I’m too busy catching up on your shows.” His arm tightens around her.

“Catching up. Liar. I know you were up at 2 AM this morning binge-watching.” She tilts her head up, eyes opening. A spark lights up her face and a mischievous curl of her lip tells Bucky she’s about to say something that’s going to make him blush. “Just admit you like Gossip Girl and go, babe.”

“Alright, I like it.” Rolling his eyes, he pecks her forehead and she smiles victoriously. It’s so adorable that Bucky, with less than three hours of sleep, adds, “God, I want to marry you.”

“What?”

Oh.

Shit.

Bucky is suddenly more awake than if someone had thrown him into an ice bath. She almost throws herself off of him, sitting up and he follows her with his eyes as she twists to turn on the lights. Golden light paints her a goddess, and her hair is messy atop her head as she stares at him with wide eyes.

Bucky sits up slowly, the blanket pooling around their waists, and she blinks at him as he chews on the inside of his cheek.

“Do you not want to get married?” he asks slowly, almost afraid. Although he’s nearly 100% certain she wants to be with him, a part of him still bites at his stomach with doubt. “Have… have I been looking at this wrong?” He doesn’t tear his eyes away, holding this staring contest as she continues to stare at him, lips slightly parted and he reaches over to touch her hand. “You okay, lover?”

“You wanna marry me?” she asks, and he nods slowly, fire rising in his stomach and crawling up his neck as he makes a mental note never to keep secrets from her because when he’s been running on three hours of sleep, he likes to spill his guts where he feels safe.

“I… I got a ring and everything.” He turns to open the drawer on his nightstand and pulls out the dark navy box, velvet brushing against his sleep-numb fingers. “Wanda and Sam helped, and I was going to make this a big thing, but—” He’s tripping over his words as he pries it open, and he watches as her gaze falls to the silver ring, the exact one from one of the pictures Wanda had shown him—”I know I don’t really deserve you, and god, you deserve better than a proposal at 5 AM but I really do want to marry you.”

“Buck—”

“I love you. I love you so much it’s crazy because I didn’t think anyone could love me, or that I could open my heart to someone like you, and I know you deserve more than this, a better man, but—”

“Bucky—”

“All I’m trying to say is… thank you. For loving me.” His sleep addled brain tries to scramble for more things to say, and he smiles, almost sad but so, so, very much in love. “Thank you for bringing laughter into my life again.”

“Bucky, you fucking dork,” are her first words and he blinks as she lunges into his body. The blankets twist and her warm muscles wrap around him as she peppers kisses all over his face. “You wonderful, wonderful man. I love you so much. I love you, I love you, I love you.” His arm props him up against her body as he holds onto the box and she straddles his waist, twisting to look at the box. Her smile is tender as she takes out the ring and slides it onto her finger and he smiles bashfully when she shows him the fit. He lets the velvet box slip from his hand to cup her waist and he sighs blissfully when she leans to kiss him.

“Remember when I asked what you wanted for Christmas last year?” she murmurs against his lips and he smiles as the cool metal of her new ring trails down his neck to his shoulder. “And you said you wanted nothing to change…”

“I guess I just didn’t want anything more than you,” he whispers fondly and she smiles, eyes closing as she knocks her forehead against his. “But this one change I can handle.”

“Yeah?” She opens her eyes to stare deeply into his and he smiles, a warm curl to his lip.

“Yeah.”

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enkelimagnus · 3 years

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Grey

Bucky Barnes Gen, 1378 words, rated T for Hydra shit

Jewish Bucky Barnes, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Episode 3 Power Broker

Bucky, Zemo and Sam are in a car to the airport where Oeznik is. Bucky takes the opportunity to seize an enemy.

TW: death of family?

Read on AO3

Part 19 of Making a Home - the Jewish Bucky series

-------------------

Breaking Zemo out is a death sentence.

Bucky’s aware of that, in the background of his mind. He knows that Zemo wants all supersoldiers wiped out. There’s no reason for him to make an exception for him. Especially considering Bucky’s track record. He’s got more blood on his hands than every other super soldier alive combined.

He doesn’t want to die. But if it happens, it should be fighting for something good, trying to make sure the serum stops being an option people can turn to. Trying to make sure what happened to him won’t happen again to anyone.

And if it takes Zemo… it will take Zemo.

They’re driving towards the airfield now, where Zemo says he’s arranged for transportation. Bucky chooses not to ask questions. The man’s changed from the prison guard outfit he’d stolen into something undoubtedly more expensive. He’s looking through the window, face frozen in thought and Bucky takes the opportunity to give him a once over.

When they’d first met, Zemo had the skittish look of a man running on adrenaline, caffeine, and the need to complete a mission. It was a look Bucky had seen before, before Hydra as well as during. The look of a man on the last rope, desperate and paranoid. There comes a time where the mission takes over the man, and all is left is that look.

It’s been 8 years. Zemo looks like a man again. He’s put on a bit of weight, rounding his cheeks, and a bit of age, with fine lines marking the corner of his eyes and his mouth.

In the reflection of the window, their eyes meet. Bucky’s been caught in his observation, and he doesn’t look away, holding Zemo’s gaze.

His eyes are still wickedly sharp. They aren’t crazed by despair anymore, however. Bucky hates how much he remembers what Zemo looked like, when he took his mind from him.

The corner of the man’s mouth pulls into a smirk and Bucky rolls his eyes and breaks eye contact before the man can make any sort of remark.

There are weapons in his clothes, or at least in his bag. Bucky doesn’t need to see them to know. Zemo’s a commander, a soldier, and he doesn’t have the same scruples against guns as people like Sam or Steve do. He’s armed. For some reason, Bucky’s thankful.

It’s unnerving to be here, in this fancy car, with this man sitting across from him. A vision from his nightmares. Bucky’s paralyzed in his seat, and even if he knows he’s the one in control here, he still feels the small scared and scarred part of him unravel in panic. Handler.

Once upon a time, he would have been expected to break a handler out of prison if he had somehow committed enough mistakes that they were arrested. He’d never had to do it, he’d always been good enough to avoid capture.

This time around, Zemo’s not pretending to be anything different than what he is. His authority is not turned off. It’s in full display, and it has been since Bucky walked into his cell and he decided to taunt him with the words.

Bucky has to admit the white hot fear those words bring into him wasn’t erased by Princess Shuri and her people. He knows Zemo saw it. He’s too sharp not to have noticed it. Bucky’s control over his body isn’t what it used to be when it was his only means of survival.

He’s lost a lot of control in the past decade. It’s for the best, of course. It means he’s healing. But some days, it feels like a malfunction.

At least, he can take solace in the fact that there is no way Zemo is as skillful now than he used to be. Eight years in solitary confinement doesn’t make for the right place to practice combat, or marksmanship. No, Zemo’s softer now. That’s one thing Bucky has going for him in this. He’s stronger, much stronger. But Zemo’s aware of that. He’s too smart not to be aware that Bucky could break his spine without that much of an effort.

He’s read the files. It’s what is the most unnerving about Zemo. He knows him. He knows him in a way that no one else alive does. Not only because he’s read the file, but because he’s the last man alive who had the privilege of controlling him. Bucky was a puppet in his hands, a slave to his will. They both know it. It’s a horrible sort of intimacy.

We have a history together.

Fuck. It’s going to be a lot of mind games in the days to come.

The road to Strausberg Airfield isn’t long, and Bucky lets himself stare at the view outside of the window for a while, mirroring Zemo.

“So what’s it like to see the outside world after a decade?” Sam asks, in an almost taunting manner. Bucky looks back at the new addition to their band of merry vigilantes.

Zemo’s eyes flicker to him for a brief moment before he looks back out. “I had forgotten how grey Berlin was in winter.” There is undeniable fondness in his voice.

He isn’t wrong. Berlin, and especially its formerly Soviet part, is very grey and square. There are pipelines running above ground the way they do in Russia, a lot of the architecture has that muted color-palette that Bucky associates easily with former Soviet Bloc countries. Was Sokovia similarly touched by the Soviet… aesthetic?

What he’d seen of Romania had been half old Kingdom gold and half Soviet steel. It seems to Bucky like it is a recurring theme in Eastern European countries. The bombs of the war left craters that the Soviets filled with grey. Sometimes, he wonders if his parents would have recognized their home city of Iași or if it had changed beyond repair.

He visited Iași when he was staying in Romania and searching for pieces of himself amongst the houses and museums and in the war memorials. Once he remembered his parents were Romanian, he managed to remember that the old country they talked about was Iași.

He had searched for the Barnes name amongst memorials of holocaust atrocities, not yet remembering that that wasn’t their real name. Barnes was the one they’d given at Ellis Island, the American identity, the one they’d chosen to assimilate. When they’d shed their Jewish, Romanian identity for something… more appropriate. Gershom had become Georges and Vina had become Winnifred. The Barasch family was now the Barnes family.

And of the Barnes, in 2024, Bucky is the last. His sisters married and took their husbands’ last name. His parents didn’t bring siblings into the US. Only them.

He’s the last Barnes alive, and he will probably die the last Barnes. He’s not exactly into the idea of having children.

Big families were always highly considered in the culture Bucky grew up in. Many children, good marriages, many descendants. Be fruitful, and multiply. They took that commandment seriously. He’s sure his sisters had plenty of kids. They always seemed to want them.

He wanted them too, back in the day. Marriage hadn’t felt like a terrible thing, even if he couldn’t marry Steve. They’d been aware of that, they’d known they had no real future together. They had an arrangement, the two of them. He’d known he’d eventually find a girl he would love, and that they’d get married and have kids.

One would be named Steve, even if it wasn’t a good Jewish name.

He closes his eyes for a moment. Nowadays… No matter how it hurts sometimes to know he’s the last one, he doesn’t think he could be a father, let alone a good one. It would be cruel for him to try and raise a child. They’re innocent. And he’s far from healthy.

Zemo’s still looking through the window when Bucky blinks his eyes open. Is he the last Zemo too? Does Zemo carry the burden of being the last of his family as heavily as Bucky does?

As the car takes a turn into the airfield and Sam and Zemo find themselves talking about the weather, of all things, Bucky settles into his silence.

#bucky barnes #jewish bucky barnes #helmut zemo #sam wilson #fic #mine #fatws

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years

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Following a day of gut-wrenching surveillance videos depicting a violent, deadly mob teeming into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, some journalists covering Trump's impeachment trial expressed bewilderment at how Republican senators serving as jurors would be able to vote to dismiss the charges.

"How will they justify acquitting the man who sent a mob for them to stop the counting of electoral votes?" asked CNN, wondering if, "Republican senators will find their conscience changed, or vote the way Trump wants them to"?

On NBC, Chuck Todd stressed that Republicans faced a difficult choice because, "History is not going to look kindly on this acquittal vote.” Specifically, he mentioned how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was an traditionalist who cares "about these institutions," and that he's "keeping an open mind" about impeachment.

This is GOP mythology. McConnell has already voted twice to stop the impeachment trial. The idea the Beltway press keeps pushing that he might suddenly turn on Trump with a dramatic flurry and vote to convict seems like pure fantasy. And McConnell supposedly cares so much about "institutions" that he rammed through a U.S. Supreme Court nominee days before the 2020 election, four years after refusing to even hold hearings on President Barack Obama's Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

McConnell is reportedly telling his GOP colleagues that the decision to convict or not should be a vote of conscience. But what if there's little or no conscience left inside the Republican caucus? How does the press adequately relate that defining feature in its impeachment news coverage?

Republicans who vote to acquit a remorseless Trump will sleep just fine at night. These are the same group of Republicans who advanced the Big Lie all winter that Trump may have won the election, after having lost by seven million votes. It's the same collection that stood by while the White House unleashed the most vicious and sustained attack on U.S. election integrity in the last century, and who said nothing while Trump demanded his political enemies be jailed, as well as pressured Georgia elections officials in January to go "find" him enough votes (11,780) to swing that state's election tally.

Why on earth do D.C. journalists think that voting "No" on impeachment would change the equation and create an ethical dilemma for Republicans? Why are reporters so committed to the myth that a GOP tipping point exists?

The wayward assumption continues to be, that of course Republicans support free and fair elections. Of course they oppose white supremacy. And of course they want to help families that have been devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Those claims have no basis in fact today. Yet that remains the Beltway media's starting point. Specifically, that the GOP has been torn apart by Trump and there's a burning desire to "move on" from his erratic and hateful ways. That a "reckoning" awaits.

That's the story the Beltway press likes to tell. It's just not true.

I'm with Esquire's Charles Pierce: "The other state of being for which I no longer have time is mystification. As in, “How can Republicans still essentially vote in favor of the mob that came after the Congress with blood in its eyes?""

CNN reported this week, "For most Republican senators, Wednesday's presentation did not seem to affect how they'll vote.” But why? Why after seeing unassailable proof that the Trump mob set out to murder members of Congress, including Republicans, why are Republican senators overwhelmingly going to sign off on acquittal? In other words, what is wrong with the Republican Party? That's the simple, central question that does not get asked. Instead, we see punditry about how Trump still maintains political control over the party, and GOP members are concerned about a backlash.

Analyzing why Republican Florida senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott can't be swayed, Politico noted, "Rubio is on a clear path for re-election, but he would invite a GOP challenger if he doesn’t stand with the former president…Scott, now running the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, remains on a track that could make him a contender in 2024."

That's how the GOP's radical, unethical nature continues to be normalized — empowering Trump's lawbreaking is presented as simply being smart politics.

When Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) did surprise the GOP this week by becoming the sixth member to vote in favor of the impeachment trial continuing, the New York Times headline read, "A Louisiana Senator's Turn Towards the Political Middle." That suggests that only players in the political middle (and on the left) are concerned by Trump's inciting of a mob. That framing absolves those on the right, despite the fact that anyone with a conscience ought to be concerned.

Remember that this is the same press corps that slow-walked Trump's months-long attempted coup, until it broke out into horrific violence on January 6, catching the media completely off guard.

Instead of accurately describing his post-election, authoritarian attempt to steal an election by invalidating millions of votes, for weeks and months we saw news updates about Trump’s “tactics,” his vague “moves” and “chicanery”; his legal “strategy” and “power play” while “sulking” and “brooding” inside the White House. Early on, Politico dismissed Trump’s ongoing rampage as nothing more than “performance art” and “bad sportsmanship.”

The Republican Party under Trump has morphed into something sinister and dangerous. The model that the press used for decades to cover the GOP is now clearly obsolete.

#articles #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP #press #media #assault on the Capitol #insurrection #January 6 2021

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sleepyverstappens · 5 years

Text

Let me share this whole new world with you (Chapter 3/6)

Title: Let me share this whole new world with you

Pairing: Daniel Ricciardo/Max Verstappen

Rating: Gen/PG

Word Count: 5482

Tags: Oliver Verstappen-Ricciardo, Original Child Character, 5+1

Summary: Time for some home GPs :D

A/N: Just a reminder, Max talks Dutch with Oliver when he’s younger/alone with him. Apart from a few Dutch sentences/words, that should be clear enough through context, but will also be translated in the end notes, most of it is written in English but in italics to indicate that it’s spoken in Dutch.

Read chapter 3 or Read from the start

2) Melbourne, Zandvoort & Monaco 2024

Melbourne 2024

Oliver’s tiny hand is clutching onto his own as they walk into the Red Bull garage, big headphones already covering his ears as engines are revved. His wispy blond hair is almost white from the sun it had gotten during the winter break spend in Australia and is now starting to fall over his eyes, in desperate need of a haircut.

“You stay with Vicky yeah, Papa’s gotta go drive the car now,” he said trying to push the strands of hair from Oliver’s eyes one last time.

“‘kay Papa, be safe,” the little boy mumbled back, the words always tugging at his heartstrings. He’d picked them up from his mum, the words always said by her every time he stepped into the car, whether it was in person or via text.

“I will Oli.”

After 2 weeks of testing in Spain and plenty of time spend in the Red Bull and Renault factories, winter break was now really over, the first practice session of the season about to start. Pre-season hadn’t been the easiest on them. Even with Enstone and Milton Keynes only being an hour apart, their rental place somewhere in the middle, they’d barely gotten the time to spend together, both of them exhausted from long days at the factory. They’d both crashed pretty much as soon as they’d managed to get Oli to sleep. At least with testing they’d had to be on track opposite each other, one of them getting to spend their day with their son as the other worked up miles on the racetrack.

Now though they were finally back in Melbourne. He loved Melbourne, a fresh start to a new season where everything was possible again. Over the years he’d been with Daniel it had become sort of a home race for him as well. A home race without the busy schedule that Zandvoort or Spa brought. While for Daniel it meant a jam packed schedule and barely any time for his family, for Max it meant he got to spend some time with his extended family. Grace, Joe and Michelle always happy to have Max to keep them company whilst their son and brother was rushed about the circuit. And of course these last two years they had all been excited to get to spend some extra time with their grandson and nephew as well.

He grabs his helmet and glances back at his son one more time, the boy happily playing with the toy car his assistant had given him. The bright yellow Renault shirt he’s wearing is clashing terribly with the colours around them, but even though Oliver had insisted on going with his papa today he’d refused to wear the Red Bull shirt to go along with it. No amount of playful teasing from the Red Bull crew had made him want to change it either, the boy happy in his ‘nana shirt.

With how quickly Oliver seemed to change his mind nowadays, the terrible twos finally rearing their ugly head just a few months before he would turn three, he would probably insist on wearing his Red Bull shirt at Renault on race day. He might be a handful at times, but Max loved him with all his being and he loved having him at the track with them.

---

Come race day he’s on his own at the garage, Oliver at Renault to spend time with Daniel’s family, it’s his home grand prix after all. It doesn’t mean Max doesn’t miss seeing his boy at the back of the garage though, his toothy grin the last thing he sees before strapping himself into the number 33 car. It makes him miss the old days sometimes, the days when he’d only have to look towards the other side of the garage to see curly hair and a bright smile. What he’d give to have been able to share that with his son, their son. Both of them giving him a kiss on each cheek for luck before they jumped into the car on their respective side of the garage.

It would never be like that, Alex now a permanent fixture on the other side of the garage, the man now his teammate for longer than Daniel had been. Them parting ways, so to speak, had probably been for the best. Made it easier for them to separate work and home, their battles now with their respective teams rather than each other.

He’s shaken from his thought by Tom handing him his helmet, reminding him that there was installation lap to be driven, the clock steadily ticking down to 16.10.

Zandvoort 2024

Home races were always special, while he was lucky to have fans come out in droves to quite a few tracks, the stands turning orange all over the world, Zandvoort was something else. The success of the first three years had made sure that Zandvoort would be a permanent fixture on the race calendar for the foreseeable future. And whilst the crowd was still mostly orange in its 5th year on the calendar he was happy to see that more and more different coloured specks had started to show up in the crowd. It’s what made the sport so special after all, there weren’t just the fans of two teams there like in football, there was a mixture of fans, even people who changed their shirts on each day of the weekend not being able to choose a favourite.

It was still all very hectic though, he’d flown into the Netherlands on Monday and had had pretty much every minute of his day scheduled from then on. Daniel and Oliver had followed on Wednesday, the hugs from his family a welcome reprieve from all the formal handshakes and (fake) nicery from the last few days.

Today hadn’t been much better, a room of bored looking media people staring at him, Lando, George and Daniil followed by a multitude of microphones waiting for him in the press pen. The pen was empty of other drivers by the time he’d been done with his last interview. He’d looked over at Vicky expecting her to tell him where he was needed next, but she hadn’t had anything planned for the next hour or two. Which is how he’d found himself here, his shoes getting filled with sand as he climbed down from the dune and onto the beach.

It wasn’t all that warm yet, the winds were strong and would surely be a big factor during the weekend, making him zip up his hoodie as he walked towards his family. He could see Victoria chasing after Oliver near the shore, his mum and Daniel chatting, sat atop a giant spread out blanket.

None of them had spotted him yet, only Victoria knowing that he had found himself some free time and was coming over, happy to help him surprise the others. He continued walking towards them, his shoes collecting more and more sand, and saw Oliver turn around still trying to avoid getting caught by his auntie. The second Oliver spotted him he was running towards him, yelling out Papa! and alerting the others of his presence. Max grinned as Oli jumped into his arms, pressing a kiss against the boy’s forehead as his son immediately started telling him all about his day.

“Hey,” he greeted his family, settling down next to them, Oli cuddling up on his lap.

“Hey, I thought you were busy for the rest of the day?” Dan asked him before pressing a kiss against his lips, a curious smile on his face when they drew apart again.

“I thought so as well, but Vicky doesn’t need me again until 4. Victoria told me you guys were on the beach and I didn’t want to miss that did I?” He addressed the last part to Oliver, bouncing him in his lap a little and ruffling his hair making the little boy giggle.

“Papa, kasteel?”

“You want to build a castle? Okay then go get your bucket.”

Soon enough not only his shoes were filled with sand, his hair and clothes covered by the sand as well, but an impressive, if he said so himself, sandcastle was standing proud in front of him.

“Come on Oli, let’s fill the moat to finish our showpiece.” He hoisted Oliver up onto his shoulders and ran over towards the sea, the plastic bucket hitting him in the head as he went, but the giggles floating along the wind more than made up for it.

The racing started tomorrow, the campsites already filled with thousands of people dressed in orange, but this right now is what he loved the most. He had never expected himself to love something more than racing, his whole life had been revolved around the sport, but now that he had this, a family of his own he’d give it up in a second if someone made him choose.

Monaco 2024

“Hello little man, are you lost?” They heard Lewis say, Oliver having ran right into him, the Brit’s hands reaching out for him before he could tumble over.

“Up?” Oli requested, hands already reaching up for Lewis, head tilted backwards with what were surely his best puppy dog eyes. They could see the other man melt before their eyes, one of Oliver’s many victims this weekend.

“You don’t have to,” Dan jumps in, but before the words could even fully leave his mouth Oliver was already in Lewis’ arms, the little boy happily snuggling his head against the man’s chest.

“It’s okay, I love kids, makes me miss when my cousins were this small. Don’t get me wrong I love playing soccer and games with them, but most of them are at that age now where they’re refusing cuddles.”

“Oh but you haven’t seen a two-year-old throwing a tantrum huh, uncle,” Dan said with a wink, clearly not having forgotten the fit Oliver threw earlier that morning, the boy refusing to eat his toast because it was cut into squares instead of triangles. Daniel had been close to pulling his hair out before Max had come into the kitchen after his shower and reminded him that squares could be cut into triangles, the boy’s cries stopping as soon as Max had cut the first one in half.

Dan and Lewis fall into an easy conversation then, Oli sucking his thumb, eyes flicking between the two adults intently. Max should probably join in, instead of just standing here, but he can’t help but let his mind wander. He’d seen Lewis change a bit during this season, it was only the 7th race of the year, but the fact that these would be Lewis’ last races had shown a different side of the man. He would never refuse to talk to you if you started up a conversation before, but would usually stick to himself if he could. Nowadays he was happy to mingle with the rest of them. Noise cancelling earphones exchanged for friendly conversations on the drivers parades, relaxed walks through the paddock rather than quick scooter rides right into the garage. It made Max wonder whether he would change, once his time came. Not that that would be any time soon if it was up to him.

Lewis’ announcement hadn’t exactly been a shock to people, 39 was already a pretty old age to retire, if you excluded Kimi of course. Still the knowledge that Lewis’ records would soon be up there ready and waiting for someone else to take them away again, had made the press go into overdrive, churning out article after article. Max didn’t really care about that though, he cared about the conversations he’d had with Lewis over the last few race weekends. About his plans to start his own fashion company, not just a fashion line but a proper brand of his own. The plan to travel to all the countries they’d been to so often but had never really gotten the chance to see properly. The wish for a child of his own, the registration for the adoption agency ready to be send off.

He’d not always liked the other man, had had more than enough moments where he’d despised him, but seeing him like this, happily chatting with Dan, Oliver now asleep in his arms, it made Max realise he would really miss him next year.

---

“Papa, kijk!” Oliver exclaimed as they crossed the street towards the harbour, the Red Bull yacht already pumping out music. That wasn’t what the little boy had spotted though, no he’d spotted the giant inflatable unicorn floating in the swimming pool.

“Wat is dat dan Oli?” They’d pretty early on decided to try and raise Oliver bilingual, Max talking only Dutch to him to try and get him to pick up Max’s native language alongside English. Max often tried to use German as well, after all now was the best time to try and teach their son more languages.

“Eehoon.”

“Eenhoorn, Oliver,” Max corrected him gently, the word still sounding silly to him in his mother tongue as well. “You want to go swimming sweetie?”

Oliver nodded his head so excitedly Max was almost afraid it was gonna fall off. They had some time to spare between the last free practice session and qualifying. Whilst Oliver had of course been with them last year, this was the first time he really got to take in the Monaco grand prix weekend. The streets of his home transformed into the tracks where his fathers got to race their fast cars. He still didn’t understand it fully, the city not all that recognisable anymore after all, and this wasn’t the part of the city where they actually lived, but seeing the excitement on their son’s face never failed to make them melt.

They quickly changed Oliver into his swimming trunks, Red Bull branded floaties wrapped around his arms to go along with them. As soon as they reached the pool he was pointing at the giant unicorn again, clearly wanting to sit on it. They waited for it to slowly float its way to the side of the pool, the currents of people wading their feet in the water making it bop up and down in every direction before Daniel shouted for someone to push it towards them. No one was surprised to see Daniel there, even with it having been six years now since he’d gotten to swim into this pool himself. It wasn’t uncommon to see Daniel back at the Red Bull hospitality these days though, nor Max at Renault’s for that matter, having a child who wanted to see both of his daddies would do that for you.

Oliver’s giggles were barely audible over the music coming from the dj booth on the other side of the deck, but they managed to go straight through to Max’s heart anyway. The boy was now sat atop the floating animal, clutching onto its rainbow mane as Daniel pushed it around the edge of the pool, not caring about the people sitting in their way.

They finished the lap of the pool, Max taking hold of the unicorn as Dan took his shoes off to join him on the edge of the pool, and just taking it all in for a while.

“Papa, kiss!” Oliver requested excitedly, his tiny little body already leaning towards him. Max grabbed hold of him before he could fall off the floatie and pressed a kiss to his son’s lips. They would need to go and prepare for quali soon, but right now as he sat on the edge of the pool, his feet in the warm water, his son happily splashing his feet into the water as he sat atop his unicorn, he couldn’t help but wish for more time.

#my fic #let me share this whole new world with you #lmsthnwwy chapter 3

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itsfinancethings · 5 years

Link

October 09, 2019 at 08:00AM

Carter Roberts’ motorized wheelchair didn’t arrive until the day he died.

It had been a long time coming and his parents had fought hard to get it. The chair cost more than $32,000 and the insurance companies wouldn’t cover it, so the family went to court. One insurer eventually agreed to pay for some components of the chair but not the whole thing. And then none of it mattered anyway. On Sept. 22, 2018, the Roberts’ doorbell rang and the chair was delivered. Also on Sept. 22, 2018, Carter died, just three months shy of his sixth birthday. He had been largely paralyzed for the final two years of his life. The family is only now beginning to pick their way through the horror of what happened.

“Our eight-year-old daughter believes she can speak to him,” says Carter’s mother Robin. “She was playing video games the other day and she’s looking up and going, ‘Carter are you seeing this? I need your help.’”

By any measure, the Roberts family of Richmond, Va. was spectacularly unlucky. They lost their son to a disease that science first recognized only in 2012. It’s new enough that it didn’t even have a formally accepted name until 2014. When it got one, it was one of those names that is more or less just a clinical description of what the disease is: acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), a sudden inflammation of spinal tissue resulting in flaccid paralysis of the muscles of the limbs, neck, face and often diaphragm. It’s a lot like polio but it’s not polio; it’s a little like meningitis and Guillain-Barré syndrome but it’s not them either.

Ilana Panich-Linsman for TIMEBraden’s nurse and mother set him up for treatment.

Indeed, no one knows exactly what it is. For the moment it remains rare: In the U.S., where AFM is closely tracked, the disease attacks fewer than one in a million people even in peak years, and it very rarely kills. But in the past seven years, it’s been striking more and killing more, and there is a tick-tock certainty to when it will hit next. As with polio, AFM is seasonal—though unlike polio, it arrives in late summer and early to mid fall, rather than in the spring and summer. Also unlike polio, it runs in an every-other-year cycle, peaking in even-numbered years.

While spotty outbreaks of AFM have been retrospectively diagnosed in the U.S. from 2005 to 2012, it was in 2014 that the disease established its current pattern. That year, there were 120 confirmed cases scattered around the country; in 2015, the total fell to 22 cases; it climbed again in 2016 to 149 cases; fell again in 2017 to 35 cases and jumped back up last year to 201 cases. So far in 2019, there have been 20 cases of AFM in nine states.

Now, as an even-numbered year inevitably approaches, there is a growing feeling of looming menace. When 2020 arrives—and then 2022 and 2024 and on into the future—more and more children are destined to be claimed, unless science gets a handle on the disease fast.

“This is our generation’s polio,” Carter’s mother, Robin Roberts says flatly.

That’s not just the opinion of a grieving mother; doctors admit to feeling daunted too. “I can’t think of a single disease that had this pattern that we’re seeing, with modern laboratory diagnostics not figuring it out,” says Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

As with polio too, the medical community has mobilized. Back in the 1930s through 1950s, the work was led by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, the non-governmental consortium of scientists that included Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, who developed the two different versions of the polio vaccine. This time it’s the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which last fall formed a task force consisting principally of 17 epidemiologists, neurologists, pediatricians and other experts from teaching hospitals and health departments across 10 states, as well as from the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Ilana Panich-Linsman for TIMERachel Scott helps her son Braden walk down the stairs in their home.

The task force had its first meeting in December 2018 at the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta, and the gathering had the feeling of a war council. Every seat at a massive conference table in a windowless room was full, with doctors and other staffers lining the walls and epidemiological maps and graphics on display screens.

“This is obviously complicated or we wouldn’t be in this place,” said Messonnier in her opening remarks.

Lending urgency to the task force’s work is that AFM seems not only to be getting stronger, but crueler too. As recently as 2014, the median age of AFM victims was seven years old; then it fell to five and now it’s just four and a half—kindergarteners. Like polio, it strikes at just the point when children are fairly defined by their happy, kinetic energy—and then it takes it away from them.

“It was kind of surreal to be like, ‘Wait, how rare is this? One in a million? You’ve got to be kidding me,’” says Jeremy Wilcox of Herndon, Va., whose four-year-old son Joey contracted AFM in September 2018 and lost the ability to walk, but has largely—though not entirely—recovered.

Roberts and Wilcox were in Atlanta in December to address the task force. Their ostensible purpose that day was to describe the nature of the disease to the doctors, who at this point understand it far less well than the lay families living its terrors. But the more pressing and powerful reason was to humanize the problem—to establish the mortal urgency of solving it.

“AFM has changed my life,” says Rachel Scott, mother of a third child, Braden, who is battling the disease, and who also attended the meeting. “It’s changed my children’s lives; they’re growing up in a completely different world than they would have. This is not something I ever would have dreamed of.”

Braden Scott, whose family lives in Woodlands, Texas, first came down with what seemed like a routine summer cold on July 4, 2016. But the next day, when he tried to eat so much as a single potato chip, he couldn’t keep it down—not because his stomach was upset, but because the muscles that control swallowing had begun to fail. “He got weaker over the next few days and we came to realize his swallowing was paralyzed,” says Rachel.

Ilana Panich-Linsman for TIMEMuscle-stimulating pads are placed on Braden’s back for treatment.

Eventually, the paralysis spread throughout Braden’s entire body below the neck, including his diaphragm, which meant he had to be intubated in order to breathe. He spent seven months in the hospital as the most acute phase of the disease receded and he received in-patient rehab, but even now that he’s home, his walking remains unsteady, paralysis continues in his left arm and his swallowing is still so poor he must be fed a liquid nutrient four times a day through a port in his stomach. Merely controlling his swallowing enough to clear saliva is a challenge, and though he’s back in school, a nurse who accompanies him must periodically suction his mouth so that he doesn’t choke.

“Every day when he comes home from school, we say, ‘OK, how many mouth suctions today?’” says Rachel. “Sometimes it’s only three and we’re like, ‘That’s amazing!’ The things I celebrate are absurd.”

Like so many AFM patients, Braden was at first misdiagnosed. When his parents rushed him to the hospital with fever and spreading paralysis, the doctors said his problem was mononucleosis and strep; they prescribed him antibiotics and steroids and sent him home. Joey Wilcox was first suspected of having Bell’s Palsy—his face was partly paralyzed, so what else could it be? The doctors eventually sent him home with no medicine and a vague diagnosis of a virus, one they said was likely to pass on its own. Carter Roberts’ family was told that he was merely tired and needed rest.

In many cases, the correct diagnosis doesn’t come until full paralysis has set in and doctors finally conduct an MRI of the spinal cord looking for a lesion or some other localized explanation. By that point, the extent of the disease can be startling. “Carter’s cord was so inflamed they couldn’t even distinguish between gray matter and white matter,” says Roberts.

If the damage AFM does shows up clearly on a scan, the cause of the disease doesn’t leave clear fingerprints, though experts have good reason to believe it’s a viral illness. Its seasonality is consistent with viral behavior—the way colds and flus strike in the fall and winter and polio in the spring. The biannual peaks are not unusual for a virus either. “Measles before vaccination was every two years as well,” says Dr. Thomas Clark, the CDC’s AFM Incident Manager.

Ilana Panich-Linsman for TIMESome reminders of Braden’s treatment hang on the wall in the Scott family home.

But measles—and polio, chicken pox, rubella, and other childhood viral diseases—are very different infectious beasts because they are all caused by a discrete virus, which can be detected in the blood and neutralized by vaccination. AFM is murkier. It’s thought to be associated with at least two different enteroviruses—viruses that incubate in the gut. There are hundreds of enteroviruses (including polio and influenza), and so far the ones designated EV-D68 and EV-A71 have been most widely implicated in AFM paralysis. But “widely” is not even close to “universally.”

During peak years, no more than 30% of AFM patients show some traces of EV-D68; another third show EV-A71 or other stray viruses; another third show nothing at all.

Even if the two enteroviruses turn out to be to blame, no one knows exactly how they do their damage. While the poliovirus directly attacks the ventral horn cells in the spinal column, it’s entirely unclear what EV-D68 and EV-A71 do to the central nervous system. The best analogy might be to Guillain-Barré, an inflammation of the peripheral nervous system that usually results from a misfiring of the immune system after an infection with a stomach or respiratory virus.

The mention of Guillain-Barré predictably gets the anti-vaccine crowd chattering, since a slight increase in the risk of the disease has been observed among people who receive the flu vaccine—on the order of one or two additional cases for every million vaccinations. (The CDC stresses that the risks associated with severe influenza—including death—are far worse than the far smaller risk of Guillain-Barré.) There is no evidence at all of any link between AFM and any vaccine, but the CDC all the same is investigating any possible connection, simply because good epidemiological sleuthing requires no possibility be overlooked.

“We’ve always thoroughly looked at vaccine safety in all of our programs,” says Patel. “Currently, we don’t have any evidence to suggest that there is an association.” Clark adds that the children who have developed AFM have generally been vaccinated in the same way and on the same schedule as the tens of millions of children who don’t get sick.

Ilana Panich-Linsman for TIMEOne of Braden’s nurses, Carly Westcott, RN, helps prepare him for therapy.

The more epidemiological avenues that reach a dead end, the more researchers are concluding that they are coming up against a disease more complex than they reckoned. “AFM can’t have a simple answer because if it was, all these smart people would have figured it out,” says the CDC’s Messonnier.

What alarms the CDC is the possibility that the medical community could face wave of cases before that figuring out can happen, and polio offers a precedent. The earliest documented polio outbreaks were mild: four cases in the U.K. in 1835; ten in Louisiana in 1835. In 1894, a major outbreak struck Vermont, when 132 children fell sick—and after that, the disease exploded. There was an epidemic of 27,000 cases in the U.S. in 1916, including 9,300 in New York City alone. In the years after, there were thousands—sometimes tens of thousands—of cases every summer in the U.S., with the peak coming in 1952, when 57,879 polio infections were recorded. The epidemiological fever didn’t break until 1955 when the first polio vaccine was approved.

If there are similarities in the AFM and polio infectious profile, there are big differences in the prognoses. Polio paralysis always seemed intractable—sudden and effectively permanent—while AFM patients can regain much of their function. That may say less about the infectious agent and more about the therapeutic options that are available in the 21st century and weren’t in the 19th and 20th.

Patients have access to a far better array of prostheses and far more thorough physical therapy programs than they would have 100 or even 50 years ago, with kids today sometimes working up to five and six hours a day to regain mobility. Braden Scott receives regular muscle therapy, which he refers to as “zapping,” and it’s a fair enough term for what the seven year old goes through several times a week. In each session, medical technicians paste 48 electrodes to his arms and legs, which send synchronized signals to various muscle groups mimicking the electrical commands the brain would normally send the muscles to get them moving. Regardless of the source of the signal, the impact on the muscles is the same: the motion serves as exercise, preventing the atrophy that can occur when a limb is unused. The nervous system benefits too, with the signal channel between the spine and the limb remaining open.

Ilana Panich-Linsman for TIMEBraden uses his toes to reach for a LEGO on a break inbetween physical therapy treatments.

Braden also underwent a relatively new surgical protocol known as nerve transfer, in which a healthy donor nerve from elsewhere in his body was left connected to the spinal cord but was rethreaded to his left arm, where AFM destroyed an existing nerve. Three years out from his symptoms, he continues to improve—but slowly. The tracheostomy tube that helped him breathe will soon come out, but his improvement in eating and swallowing normally—which takes the complex interplay of multiple muscles in the head and neck, as well as coordination with the throat to protect the trachea—has been much slower.

Inevitably in the U.S., any disease—especially a newly identified one with treatment protocols that are by definition unproven—will run into the wall of the health insurance system, with parents dividing their time and energy between tending their sick child and fighting simply to get coverage.

“It’s hell,” says Roberts, who battled for the wheelchair that came too late for her son. “You’re just dropped blindly in the middle of a labyrinth that is health care. You’re grasping at walls and corners trying to feel your way out, and no one is willing to hold your hand or give you a GPS.”

Toward the end of Carter’s life, his doctors recommended a drug to ease his breathing, but the insurance company refused to pay for that, too. “I pushed back as far as I possibly could until a final denial after eight months,” says Roberts. She wonders to this day whether the drug would have made a difference.

Ilana Panich-Linsman for TIMECaroline Casanova, LVN, one of Braden’s nurses, checks his blood sugar as he watches TV with his brother.

Joey Wilcox has mostly recovered, a year out from his initial symptoms. He still has some paralysis on the left side of his face and a bit of a limp in his right leg, but when he first got sick, he was so weak he referred to himself as a “floppy human.”

“I’m thinking it may have come from a video game,” says his father, Jeremy. “He said, ‘Am I always going to be a floppy human?’ My wife said no. I didn’t answer and I don’t know if I would have given the right answer because saying to your child, ‘I don’t know’ is not comforting or reassuring.” If medical history is a guide, comfort does come, reassurance does come—cures and vaccines do come. But they come only with time and only with work—as the calendar moves inexorably to the next even-numbered year.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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