#zainab does ask meme things

[firstelevens]

No. 20 from the eras tour prompt list for sambucky ? ?

did I hear someone ask for a Sweet Home Alabama Louisiana AU? no? well I wrote the start of one anyway, so here it is

20. all your dirtiest jokes

Pebbles go flying as Bucky pulls his rental up in front of Sam’s house. He kind of wishes there was the satisfying screech of tires on asphalt to emphasize his mood, but he slams the car door twice as hard to make up for it, and feels just a little bit better afterwards.

Back when they were kids, the Wilsons’ place had been close enough to the neighbors’ houses to wave at them from the porch. The house that Sam bought when he came home from his first tour is set back a lot further than that, wooded where it doesn’t back up onto the water, so Bucky has no compunctions about getting a little shouty.

“Sam Wilson, I know you’re in there!” he calls out, walking up to the front door. “You can dodge my calls as long as you want, but I’m not going anywhere until you open up.”

It’s not a big house, and there’s at least three open windows, so there’s no question that Bucky’s voice is carrying through loud and clear, but there’s no response. Bucky raps sharply on the doorframe.

“You can’t avoid me forever, Sam. I know this town just as well as you do, and I will follow you everywhere.”

It takes another five minutes, but finally, Bucky sees a figure approaching through the frosted glass pane on the front door. When it swings open, he’s met with a bare-chested Sam Wilson, breathing heavy from a workout as he pulls his earbuds out of his ears.

For all that he was yelling a second ago, Bucky suddenly can’t seem to make words come out of his mouth. To add insult to injury, Sam seems perfectly unaffected by the sight of him, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Bucky Barnes,” he drawls, and Bucky hates how comforting that voice still is after all this time. “What can I do for you?”

In a second, the ire comes flickering back to life. The nerve of Sam, to ask that question when he knows perfectly well the only thing that Bucky’s been asking him for for the past year.

He holds up the envelope that’s the whole reason he had to drag his ass back here, a thousand miles and twenty years removed from home.

“You could start by giving me a fucking divorce.”

Bucky spent so long working himself up over this, back in New York and on the plane here and on the almost-two-hour drive from New Orleans. He’d written and rewritten a hundred different speeches, rehearsed so many arguments with the Sam in his head that he was sure he’d know exactly what to say.

But now he was here, and he’d gone and delivered what should’ve been the last line of his scathing speech way too early, and what more was there to do except stand there on Sam’s porch and glare at him expectantly?

Sam, for his part, looks at Bucky consideringly for a moment, then peers around him to look out towards the yard. “You should come inside,” he says, and then steps away, leaving the door open.

The petty part of Bucky wants to refuse, wants to make a nuisance of himself right here on the porch so Sam can’t ignore him, but then he stops to take in his surroundings for longer than a second. The air is thick, the heat more sluggish than it was when his flight touched down. Beyond the trees, the sky has gotten darker. It’s been a while since Bucky lived on the bayou, but the signs of an oncoming storm haven’t changed.

He huffs and steps into Sam’s house, closing the door behind him just as thunder rumbles in the distance. It’s cooler inside, at least, and as Sam moves further into the house, Bucky figures he’s supposed to follow. He’s still not completely over his need to be a nuisance—or so he tells himself—so he goes slowly, glancing around at the house that Sam bought long after Bucky wasn’t a part of his life anymore.

Bucky knows it’s a completely different building, but part of him still expects that it’ll be the house that Sam grew up in, all warm wood and quiet chaos. Somewhere in his head, he thinks that if he just went up that staircase in front of him, he’d end up in Sam’s childhood bedroom, sixteen years old and laid out on the floor with the boombox between them, laughing at the dirty jokes that Sam heard in senior calc or trying to figure out just what the deal was between their grade’s latest on-again, off-again couple.

But this isn’t that house, Bucky reminds himself, and this isn’t back then. He’s not looking to go back in time; he just wants to go forwards, and he could if Sam would just cooperate.

“What happened, you get lost in that hallway?” asks Sam, when Bucky finally makes it to the kitchen. He doesn’t bother answering, but Sam’s back is to him, so there’s no way to tell whether he’s even noticed. “Hey, cream and no sugar, right?”

“What?”

Sam turns around with a mug of coffee in his hand, and Bucky’s pretty sure he can’t hide how he immediately perks up when the cup is set in front of him. For a second, he thinks about telling Sam that he does take sugar now, just to be contrarian, but then he remembers he’d actually have to drink it and throws that plan out the window.

“This is fine, thanks,” he eventually says, setting the envelope on the island and picking up the coffee. He hasn’t had caffeine since before his flight this morning, and he can feel the first sip right down to his toes. His eyes actually close for a second, and when he opens them, Sam is back on the other side of the counter, looking amused. There’s no mug in his hands.

“You’re not having any?” Bucky asks. “What’d you do, poison it?” 

Even if he did, Bucky’s not convinced he’d be able to put it down. It’s really good coffee.

“I will,” says Sam. “But my Mama would kill me if I entertained company like this, so I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home; the view’s nice from the family room if you missed the water.”

He breezes out before Bucky can argue, his footsteps thudding up the stairs between one sip of coffee and the next.

After a moment of looking around incredulously, waiting to see if maybe he’s being pranked, Bucky decides this is just Sam trying to annoy him into leaving, and he won’t let it work. He marches into the family room just as the rain starts in earnest, and just to spite Sam, he turns his back to the French doors and surveys the rest of the room. There’s art hanging up, intermingled with family photos. Lumpy ceramics that are definitely grade school art projects sit beside beautiful crystalline sculptures, tall and spiky and somehow familiar.

Along one of the walls is the credenza that Bucky recognizes from Sam’s parents’ house, the one that Mr. Wilson had hauled home from an estate sale and refinished just because Sam’s mother had lingered beside it for a few seconds longer than anything else. It’s a different color now than it was before, but Bucky would recognize it anywhere. Sitting on top of it are what Bucky guesses are the important photos: Sarah’s wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson on the boat together, Sam with a toddler beside him and a baby in his arms. 

Furthest to the left is a picture of the dock behind the Wilson house. Two figures sit at the end of it, leaning into each other in the sunshine. One of them wears a t-shirt, gangly arms braced behind them. The other has a letterman jacket on, and that’s what tips Bucky off when he picks up the frame to look at it more closely: that’s him and Sam, sitting out where they did almost every day after school. Sam had gotten his varsity jacket for the baseball team when they were sophomores, and Bucky was pretty sure he’d worn it more often than Sam had. He’d always liked the way it felt on his shoulders, and when fall rolled around and the wind blew in a little cooler off the water, Sam always passed it over to him without needing to be asked.

They’d gotten a little more refined, once driver’s licenses were acquired and curfews were lengthened. Sam would drive the Wilsons’ old pickup truck a little ways out of town, to an empty plot of land flanked by trees on one side and water on the other, and they would sit and soak up the wind off the water until they could both breathe a little easier. Bucky had started thinking of it as their piece of the island, the safest place he could ever remember being.

When the future had barreled towards them with no signs of stopping, it was where Sam had driven them, nothing around but the birds in the trees when he quietly suggested his plan for getting out of Delacroix and taking Bucky with him. Nobody else had been around to see Bucky fling his arms around Sam’s neck and whisper a muffled yes into his shoulder, either: both of them a little bit scared of the future but determined to make it better for each other.

Maybe they can be reasonable about this. Maybe he and Sam can look at each other and see exactly what the other person needs, the way they did when they were younger. Maybe there don’t have to be questions and discussions and the kind of passive aggressive emails they’ve been exchanging through lawyers for the past year.

The rain is still coming down hard, lulling Bucky into a daze, so he can’t be blamed for the way he startles when Sam’s voice sounds from behind him. He scrambles to grab the picture frame before it falls out of his hands, setting it down and taking a beat before he turns around.

Sam is holding the envelope with the divorce papers in his hands, but Bucky has seen his ‘I give up’ face and that definitely isn’t it.

“The entire year that we’ve been going over this, I’ve asked you the same question, over and over, and you’ve never answered,” Sam says.

“Fuck,” says Bucky, scrubbing a hand down his face. “This? Again?”

“Yeah, again,” says Sam. “Because if I’m getting a divorce, I at least deserve to know why. I deserve to know what changed.”

“I have told you every single time you asked, Sam. Nothing changed. Nothing changed, because this was never a real marriage, and you know that. We got married so we could both get the fuck out of this town, and so I could stop being so terrified all the time, and we did that, and now we’re done.”

Sam crosses his arms, setting his jaw, and it occurs to Bucky that this is the first battle of a long war. “We did all that fifteen years ago, easy. That’s not what this is about. What changed, Buck?”

But Bucky can’t answer Sam any more now than he could the first time he asked that question a year ago. He can’t remind Sam of all the things he missed out on because he was tied to Bucky, he can’t bring up Riley or Sam’s parents or all the little ways that Bucky managed to steal things from him without even trying, because Sam would never see it. Even now, squaring off against each other with no possible middle ground, Sam would never see it, so Bucky can’t say it.

“Just sign the damn papers, Sam,” is what Bucky says instead.

It’s the first time he’s ever evaded the question in person. Somehow when he pictured Sam reading all those emails and messages he’d sent, Bucky had never imagined a flicker of disappointment on his face, gone as soon as it appeared.

Sam turns to set the envelope on an end table and picks up a wristwatch from beside it, doing up the strap before he turns around again. When he does, he’s got a determinedly cheerful smile on his face, the kind that Bucky has always known meant trouble.

“Gee, Buck, I wish I could, but as it happens, I’m running late for something,” he says, with an exaggerated look at his watch. “Maybe later?”

He’s already heading for the door, leaving Bucky to hurry after him. “What do you mean you’re late for something? Where the fuck are you going in a hurricane?”

Sam snorts. “You’ve been away too long. This is barely even a storm.”

An enormous crack of lightning punctuates his words, and Bucky raises his eyebrows.

“It’s a drizzle,” says Sam, pulling on a jacket. “And I have a date.”

Bucky is not entirely prepared for the feelings that those words stoke in his chest, but worse still is what Sam calls out before the door swings shut behind him.

“Guest bedroom’s upstairs, second door on the left. Don’t wait up.”

He’s not entirely sure how much time he loses, fuming in the foyer of Sam’s house, but eventually, that rage sharpens into something else entirely as he remembers what he yelled out standing on Sam’s porch half an hour ago.

He knows this town just as well as Sam does.

He knows this town just as well as Sam does, and unless fifty years of corporate development hit Delacroix in the last fifteen, there’s only one place to take a date if you’re an adult who doesn’t want to get accosted by the entire senior population of the island over the course of your evening.

Bucky pulls his keys from his pocket and and umbrella from Sam’s coat closet. If Sam means to drag this out, Bucky’s going to make sure he feels every single second, until he decides for himself that this marriage is more trouble than it’s worth.

(And if, before he leaves, he swaps his comfortable traveling clothes for a short sleeved button down that’s a size too small and not buttoned enough, well, nobody ever said Bucky was perfect.)

#sambucky #ok admittedly i lied emma did in fact cheerlead the writing of this and encourage me the whole way but what's new #this is truly just like. the opening half a chapter of this au but I have THOUGHTS #to be clear the rest of it is never getting written unless a miracle occurs #but here have this nonsense on the occasion of bonky's birthday #zainab does ask meme things #taylor swift prompt fics

[sourcherryandsprinkles]

xavier x addams reader where she does witchy things and xavier is totally whipped for her

Ahh I miss writing for this fandom! Wednesday is one of my favorite fandom to write for (especially addams!reader) <3 Where is everyone?

my taglists are here + you can send requests here at any time

—

‘’Hand me the crow skull.’’

Xavier scanned across the table for the skull and handed it to you. There was a small — and overpriced — witchcraft store in Jericho, but he had a feeling you had gotten it yourself from a dead crow. The thought sent shivers down his back and impressed him at the same time.

‘’What is it that you’re doing exactly?’’ he asked, his spiritualism and witchcraft practice knowledge not as advanced as yours. 

Before you, a pentacle had been drawn with some lit candles around it, turning an old table into your altar. In the middle of the pentacle, you had superpositioned some bones along with a piece of fabric, turning the Nightshades library into your personal sanctuary.

If Principal Weems ever found out, she would shut down all activities and confiscate all of your material. Although Nevermore was a school for outcasts of all kinds, witchcraft practice outside classes was strictly forbidden. 

‘’Spying on my enemies,’’ you replied as you placed the small crow skull on top of the stacked bones. ‘’I suspect Bianca is planning to sabotage the Black Cats’ boat for tomorrow's Poe Cup.’’

‘’She sabotages everyone's boats every year. This is nothing new,’’ Xavier said, already feeling defeated although the competition was tomorrow. 

Somehow, only Bianca's boat make it back across the lake every year. Everyone else end up in the lake. It's too strange to be a coincidence or a fair win.

‘’Her little plans won’t be going accordingly this year. Wednesday made me swear on our great aunt Calpurnia’s grave that I would make sure Bianca wouldn’t sabotage her team’s boat. Unfortunately, a protection spell on their boat would be too obvious, but I can figure out her plans with a little crow's eye.’’ 

Xavier drew his eyebrows. ‘’A crow’s eye?’’ 

You hummed, then grabbed a handful of white grains and asked Xavier to move. ‘’Step back, mon amour, I wouldn’t want to injure you. It’s gonna blow up.’’ 

Getting the message, Xavier took a few steps back and watched from a safe distance. 

‘’Wings of Titania,’’ you began, sprinkling white grains around the bones,’’bear mine eyes aloft as I bid thee.’’ You dropped the rest of the white grains and all that was inside the pentagram blew up, your eyes turning white as your head tilted back the same way your sister would when getting a vision. 

—

Wednesday taglist: @bellblake121890 @vesperazhier @kaldurahms-lover @beeebo234 @nephilimsss @mayuphoenix @sweetheartlizzie07 @watermelon-18 @snixx2088 @555stargirl555 @robinscardigan @chumchum19 @lilttblog @aphex2winn @heizenka @mystargirl-interlude @hwrtsiren @babygirljay20 @wildflowerlyss @strangersomeone @openfandoms @charlottelaffin @iheartmaddyperez @starless-starkov @ali-r3n  @poppet05  @ell0ra-br3kk3r

 @rhaenyraswife  @teaganthemorningstar  @aphex2winn @moompie  @ifevilwhyhot @oliviah-25 @spenglerslime @wetwilliam02 @yellowcupcakes @haileyismoo @theyslayallday @wrldofsage @manofworm @rhydianissuperior @supersanelyromantic @nicangel13 @toylewestinnyc @meme-queen-1999 @rottenstyx @mxxny-lupin @idli-dosa @silenzju @ar40s @sweeterheartxamerica @renaissancewhxre @jordierama @lilppsblog @harrystylesfp  @katsuki420 @ravenssh1t @izzy-laufeyson @iluvwomenblog @kenzi-woycehoski @arunaposeidondottie @liidiaaag  @lilaconner @katsukis1wife @momoewn  @amithesimpoffandoms @chaotic-fangirl-blog @hawkegfs  @lyxrix @mommyruuetrue  @acornacreacure

@lucassinclairsgf @youdontneedtoknowthisinformation @aabananaa @starrrslove @marissapearle @sshesang @scarxvodka  @xoxo-zainab @illf4iry  @yourfavdummy @leoluvsur-pappy @kcskye123 @wenvierismycomfort @pedrosprincess @luvvtxinityy @targaryenmoony @icarly23 @HB8301 @red1culous @kattybug @sI33pyh0110w04  @luci1fer @bloodyhw @slytherinambitious  @wilmalovegood @t-candy @tommysaxes @adaydreamaway08  @aqshua @lynbubble  @straberryshortcake143

All and more taglist: @spiokybirdstarfish @kenqki @liidiaaag @hawkegfs  @gillybear17  @areaderinlove @acornacreacure @black-rose-29 @fudge13 @cece05 @rosie-cameron @Caxddce @laylasbunbunny @gemofthenight @beautyb1ade  @hi-bored-as-fcuk-rn  @lovelyy-moonlight @mellabella101 @vxnity713  @marzipaanz  @bisexualgirlsblog @queenofslytherin889 @thatbxtchesblog @softb-tterfly @ethanlandrycanbreakmyheart  @xyzstar  @graceberman3  @Heartsforneteyamsully  @aerangi  @hallecarey1  @bxbyyyjocelyn @mikeyspinkcup

#xavier thorpe #xavier thorpe x reader #xavier thorpe x addams!reader #xavier thorpe imagine #wednesday #wednesday imagine #xavier thorpe x you

[taxicabsandbirthdays2019]

Hello!

If you’re seeing this post, it’s because you’re a Zainab (aka taxicabsandcupcakes) superfan, like all people with good taste are. And probably also because somebody messaged you asking if you wanted to be a part of a super secret, super fun birthday project for Zainab and you, being very cool, said yes!

Here’s the details you need to know in order to participate:

what we’re doing: making original works in honor of Zainab’s 25th birthday! What does that mean? What kind of works?? Good question! Here’s some ideas:

fanfiction for a thing that Zainab loves that perhaps you also love and would be happy to write about! (this can legit be like 45 words total, no pressure!)

make a mood board of all aesthetic pictures that remind you of Zainab and her greatness!

make a playlist in her honor or for a thing she loves!

draw some fanart of a thing she loves! Or of her!

make some gifs of a thing she loves!

write a sonnet praising her genius and beauty!

do your own version of the #Fake Movie Meme (check out her blog for what this is, if you don’t know)

make a Blingee just for her. Do the kids still make Blingees?

literally write a text post about how cool she is and wishing her a happy birthday!

These are just suggestions and jumping off points, so feel free to get creative and do what you do best!

when we’re doing it: works should be posted between Wednesday, July 24th and Friday July 26th! Doesn’t matter when, as long as it’s on one of those three days (and honestly, if you’re a little late, it’s still cool! You’re doing a nice thing!)

how we’re doing it: post your work to your blog on the aforementioned dates and be sure to tag it with #taxicabsandbirthdays2019 first and foremost. You can also mention this blog (@taxicabsandbirthdays2019) and Zainab’s (taxicabsandcupcakes) in the post! I’ll also be reblogging everything onto this blog so it’s all collected in one place!

what we’re doing now: working on our gifts for Zainab! And telling anyone else who you think would like to participate about this project! Seriously, we want to get as many people who know her on tumblr to contribute so it’s like a big virtual birthday festival, so share this blog with anyone who might be interested! But like obviously don’t tell her, because it’s a surprise!

That’s everything I can think of for now, but if you have any questions, just reply to this post, send an ask to this blog, or feel free to send a chat my way!

And thank you all for being a part of this! You’re amazing!

#taxicabsandbirthdays2019 #info post

[aikainkauna]

Fic mehm

This was shortish, so might as well post it here. Snurched from the lovely @trelobita .

-What is your total word count on AO3?

-1 421 808. That little?!? I thought I would've gone past the 2 million mark a long time ago. What with Connie whipping me on the way he does.

-How often do you write?

-When the right mood/inspiration comes, and when I'm healthy enough (both mentally and physically) to be in writing condition. Which is not often enough; I hate it when I do want to write, but brain fog and/or physical fatigue mean I can't keep my brain going or my body upright. That's mostly for fiction, though. I can type bloggity waffle like this, and could just about proofread a sex toy review today despite it being a brainfog/tireded day. The deadline for the review was today, so I did it under duress and must've left something out or fucked up some grammar as consequence. Finnish conjugations are hell when your memory is shot to pieces; English is much easier to write because you don't have to remember how to conjugate a word to denote it's in the past tense for a plural with a conditional towards place A, signifying inclusion. No, I'm not joking. Sauvallanikinkos? ("Also with my wand, too, maybe?")

-Do you have a routine for writing?

-My body isn't good with routines and schedules, so no. The only pattern I have is to try and get 1000 words done at least and then to email myself the latest draft after I've finished writing.

-What are your favourite tropes?

-Have you got a month? (This question foolishly asked about your favourite kinks and tropes and pairing types all in the same question, BTW, so I split it up into three questions, because... c'mon.)

Tropes:

-Flawed characters who are still somehow understandable and appealing; not the typical Asshole Protagonist or antihero thing so much but more of an... well, I guess it's just good characterisation I prefer, in the end. Not that kind of squickily obvious macho power fantasy sold as "grittiness" just for the sake of being an asshole (funnily enough, that kind of crap usually comes from the kinds of people who have too much privilege in the first place). So, yeah, good characterisation that's still got some shreds of humanity left is my jam.

-Telepathic lovers. Exactly because it hurts so much when the person who's supposed to love you the most and to understand you the best doesn't, and vice versa. So that's a big RL trauma and squick I prefer to fix, because in fic, I CAN.

-That's a major one, actually. Fix-its not so much on a plot level but on a human level. Especially sexism/gender bullshit-breaking fixes. Fix-its get a bad rap, but that kind of thing, just like the bashing of romance and fanfic, sets off my "ah, this wouldn't be the devaluing of something considered empathic and female/feminine again, now would it?" alarms.

-This overlaps with the pairing thingy, but the Depraved Bisexual is my favourite character type to write. All the Connies, Tennant!Peter Vincent, Captain Renault, Zainab, Laura, etc... YES.

-Male character gives up some masculine privilege he doesn't fancy anyway for the sake of love and empathy/female character gives up stereotypical female things she doesn't fancy anyway in order to be herself and free herself as much as she can from society's chains. Give Torsten all the pwetty dwezzez he wants and for Falcon!Yassamin to remain childfree, dammit!

-Man cuddles and medicates woman during her period and actually empathises/feels how awful it is. As I was saying about the fix-its...

-Funny banter, even if I can't write it as hilariously as I'd want to.

Favourite kinks?

-Poetic prose and Romanticism. It's word porn or nothing, baby.

-Historical detail, accuracy preferred but depends on how the story wants to go (the Barmakids DON'T get butchered horribly by Harun al-Rashid in 803, TYVM).

-Anal! That's almost too obvious to mention.

-Androgynous, genderbending, sex-bending, femme men. Why do you think Connie is the love of my life?

-Lots of arousal-drippage.

-Some way for the bottom to see themselves being banged. Mirrors or telepathy or magic or video camera projecting it before their eyes or whatever. Unfff.

-Orgasms. Always orgasms to complete satisfaction. Orgasm denying or writing it badly or so vaguely that characters/readers can't get any catharsis/release for the arousal is a huge squick. That's a hard limit. Fuck characters who tease and don't let someone get off.

-Psychological/emotional depth. That's such a no-brainer it shouldn't even be necessary to mention (although in these days, it seems to be, because apparently wanting that is now a repressed sexual minority instead of normal human, especially female, sexuality. Oh, fuck off). Yeah, these memes do bring out the pet peeves about internalised misogyny, don't they? Especially the sort that manifests itself in sputter-inducing ignorance. Even my medieval characters and their somewhat dated and essentialist ideas of sex and gender are ahead of Tumblr in the very basics, FFS.

-BDSM that's based very much on extreme care and healing, the sort that uses the intense sexual activities/sensory overload as a kind of way to heal the sub's anxieties and to help the sub let go, achieve catharsis and release. And for the top's love to be the guiding, ravishing, then healing and comforting force that contains the sub and the sub's anxieties in a fiercely loving and protective way and absolutely, so that not a drop spills over. So, yep, BDSM as therapy is my kink in both RL and in fic. Not so much a desire to humiliate or to be humiliated, but on the contrary, to value and to honour the other half. The top finds strength and validation through being the healer, through their power being able to do something good (instead of tearing someone down and having power over them through that). Yes, I know that's not everyone's idea of BDSM, but it's mine and that's what you'll get if it's a healthy relationship I'm trying to portray. (The Barrings and Zainab and Fadl don't have the healthiest ideas of sex, anyhow; Jaffar/Pwinzezz usually do.)

And I'm leaving out so many. You only have to look at my Ao3 pages to see the recurring themes:p

Favourite pairing types?

-Experienced Depraved Bisexual Character/Less Experienced and/or Repressed Character, GIMMIE. Fucking love that shit.

-Similar: Older, More Experienced Man/Younger, Horny Woman.

-Horny couple, usually M/F, seduce someone into a threesome. The Rosesverse and Devilry are full of this, so might as well admit it.

-Do you have a favourite fic of yours?

-I do have a soft spot for the first two fics in the Falconverse. As if you didn't all know that already! They do have some noticeable flaws here and there, especially the first one (I still insist that weird lube choice was HIS and not mine; I do know better and yelled at him at the time), but they still contain my deepest and most profound writing both erotically (and I mean that in the widest sense of the word, encompassing all things Love) and spiritually and character-wise. Defy Not The Stars also turned out better than I expected, considering I had never attempted so much plot and a traditional historical romance novel before. But I guess that Roses, what with its length, has allowed me to explore more aspects of the characters and their lives than anything else I've written. And of course, considering Devilry is my most-read saga ever, I do have a soft spot for that pile-up of a car crash. If only for the sheer intensity of the ride; I was just thinking yesterday how it really was aghori sadhana done through writing. Meditating in a graveyard is for wimps; try spending months in Torsten Barring's fragrant boypussy.

-Your fic with the most kudos?

To no one's surprise, Because The World Belongs To The Devil, at 234 kudos.

-Anything you don’t like about your writing?

-I suck at pacing sometimes. The sex scenes tend to run overlong if I write them in several sessions instead of just one go. It's not that the characters want to try different sex acts and shag more than once during a night, but more that the tension is spread out unevenly ("JFC, why did they change position again? I want them to just fucking come already, damnit!") This is obviously a result of how many things *I* see in my mind's eye during a wank; it's always more of a clipshow of different sex acts and pairings and orientations than one straightforward scenario. I'll be more mindful of that in the future and have been watching out for it in the past few fics already; I don't think the shags in The Guardians of Samarkand overran, for example.

-And sometimes my kinks get too obvious and repetitive for me, too, the way any porn gets tedious and repetitive. But on the other hand, I know very well that fanfic *is* about us imposing our kinks on our darlings, no matter how much we may go on about our dedication to characterisation and such. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: what's key is to get away with your kinks *but* in such a way that they can also engage the reader and that they become interesting and enjoyable not just for you, but for the readers, too. And you need good characterisation for that, and it's a really delicate balance to juggle your kinks and believable characterisation.

-Something you *do* like about your writing?

-I can write immersively and deeply and engage all the senses (sight, touch, scent...) in rich detail, as well as go deeply and profoundly into the emotions. And write some fucking hot porn ;) Those are the things I've had praise for, at least. Maybe my spiritual bits aren't as relatable or something, because people hardly ever remark on those (interestingly, my mum is the only one to have taken up those bits! But I skim over the sex scenes when I read the fics to her, so she only gets the gen). Or then it's the fact that most of the time it's Thief of Bagdad fic, and thus in an Islamic context, and most readers aren't familiar enough with, say, Sufism, to feel like they're qualified to comment without making arses out of themselves. But of course I like my spiritual bits; I'm an ex-religions major!

This had a taggity thing at the end, but I hate doing those because it always puts pressure on them even if you say they don't have to (come, now. The pressure is there, the moment you mention someone by name). I don't own the meme or you, so, as always: do what thou wilt.

#writing #meme #meta #personal #i guess #ao3 #fic

[pocketofjeonbunny]

if you and your crush/so were in a fic what cliche trope/s would you two be? (i want to see kinky ones too OKAYYYY)

Now THIS is one damn interesting ask! AHAHAH THANKS ZAINAB FOR SENDING THIS ASK! (and then explaining on pm bout what it means ahahaha 😅) The thing is I do have a man but I won’t include him in this fic thingo cause I’m a secretive bitch 😂 soooo guess it will be Tae bae for nowwww!

So if we were in a fic, our cliche trope/s would probably be like: 

Friends with benefits to lover au (CAUSE HELL YEAAAA I WANT THAT STEAMYNESS)

You know its like Tae and I meet and we hit off really REALLY really well and things get steamy and passionate real fast. You know the whole SHABANG 😉😉😉 (we both got needs ya know ahaha)

Dom Tae and sub me and lots of rough sex cause why not 😉 

Even like quickies back stage or what not cause the more risky the more funnnnn (I never said that lololol)

Lots of teasing (by me of course) cause I love having that upper hand where I’m the one in control (excluding the bedroom of course cause sub all the way hehehehe)

But then fun times takes a turn cause messy feelings start getting in the way

Lots of emotional issues cause of me. I’m a weird person when it comes to love and all because when I like someone, I don’t show it ( I call myself a secretive bitch cause of this very reason 😂)

Lots of slow burn where we just play hide and seek which each other about our feelings

Peak a boo feelings (cause I’m seriously afraid of rejection and heartbreak)

You know the cliche where Tae does lil things that makes you all soft and mushy and fall for him even more 

Or does things that make you go ‘hmmmmm I think he likes me’

The cliche where he confesses his love thinking you are asleep BUT YOU WIDE AWAKE ASF! 

Lots and lots of cute small romantic gestures cause I am a sucker for them

Lots of crazy wild adventures like exploring places and what not cause we both crazy peeps up for crazy adventures (haram ones too 😉)

A lot of weird inside jokes and memes between us ahahaha. To the point where if someone saw them, they’d be like ‘WTF is wrong with these two’

This was one goddamn interesting ask SO THANKS Zainab FOR SENDING THIS! Imma send this to more people now CAUSE I WANNA SEE WHAT YALL HAVE TO SAY! but thanks zaiiiiiii 😘

#ummmmm #well #I know I said tae the whole time #but honestly Im just talking about my life rn #im a goddamn secretive bitch that doesn't talk about my love life and sex life BUT HERE IT IS #like of course the whole thing here hasn't happened #HASNT ESCALATED THAT MUCH THIS QUICK #BUT #butttttt #its getting there #AND ITS KINDA FREAKY YALL #ANYWAYS ENOUGH ME RANTING BOUT MY PERSONAL LIFE #It feels weird opening up like in my tags about my life but aljefnajehenjksn idk #anyway ill shut up now TEEHEE ^_^

[firstelevens]

bed sharing for the ask game?

🛏️ Bed Sharing

After the week they’ve had, Bucky is tired enough that he doesn’t think to ask why Shuri looks so smug at dinner. He’s mostly just caught between relief that their mission is over and worry for Sam, who spends the whole meal looking like he’s about to pass out facedown in his stew.

It’s only afterwards, when a member of palace staff escorts them to their guest quarters, that Bucky realizes he messed up. Sam is half asleep, listing into Bucky’s side at this point, so it’s in hushed tones and reasonably competent Xhosa that Bucky says he’ll just get the Captain situated before Bucky gets shown to his own room.

The blank and somewhat panicked stare that he gets in response is all that Bucky needs to realize what happened. He backtracks immediately, assures the now-worried attendant that he just misunderstood, and hauls Sam into the room before the conversation can deteriorate any further.

Sam is just awake enough to stumble off to the bathroom, grabbing sweatpants from his duffel as he goes. Left alone in the room, Bucky surveys the space.

The view out the windows is beautiful, the room is tastefully decorated, and—to absolutely no one’s surprise—there’s just one bed.

Part of Bucky is delighted that things between him and Shuri have been repaired enough for her to play silly pranks on him again, but did it have to be now? And did she have to drag Sam into it?

They’re due to stay at least another three days in Wakanda, long enough for Torres and Yelena to heal up fully. If Bucky reacts now, Shuri’s just going to escalate things, and he’s not sure he’s ready to see what leveling up looks like here.

Bucky considers his escape routes. He’s been in the guest quarters at the palace enough times over the years to know that all the rooms are similarly appointed, and there’s always a plenty-comfortable chaise by the coffee table, arranged to face the windows that look out onto the city. When he turns to that particular spot in this room, it’s conspicuously empty.

There might be a couch in Yelena or Joaquín’s rooms, he reasons, but if either of them wake up to find him sleeping there, he’ll never hear the end of the questions about lover’s quarrels, and they’re both too injured for him to put any real menace into a threat. He could take the floor, maybe, but if he does, Sam’s either gonna fix him with those big brown pity eyes or he’ll mention it to Shuri in passing, and either way, Bucky’s going to suffer.

He spends long enough quietly panicking over his options that Sam comes back out of the bathroom. He stifles a yawn, his faded St. Bernard Bullfrogs t-shirt clinging on for dear life as he stretches his arms over his head.

It takes him a second to take in the room, but he seems unfazed when he does. “We sharing?” he asks Bucky, yawning again.

“It’s just a mix-up,” Bucky says quickly. “I can—”

“We’re sharing,” says Sam, with an absentminded pat to Bucky’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I won’t get fresh with you. I’m a gentleman.”

Bucky’s face goes hot. He’d been doing just fine panicking about sharing a bed with Sam in the abstract; the last thing that he needs to think of is what it might look like if Sam did get fresh with him. He swallows hard and shakes his head to clear it.

Sam, for his part, is completely oblivious to the crisis that Bucky’s experiencing. He just ambles towards the bed and throws back the covers on the right side. The sigh that he lets out as he settles on the mattress is pure relief, accompanied by a softly mumbled, “I love Wakanda.”

It’s deeply inconvenient, Bucky has to admit, that Sam is so cute. It would be fine if he were just hot. Hot would be fine. Hot can be ignored. Cute, on the other hand…cute isn’t something Bucky has defenses against. Cute is why Bucky always caves and takes the boys out for ice cream before dinner and why the baby goats in Bucky’s charge always got away with misbehaving. Cute is why Alpine is the most spoiled cat in the five boroughs and why all three Barnes sisters always knew that the quickest way to get something was to ask Bucky for it first.

Cute is why—after a furiously-whispered pep talk in the mirror about finding an attendant and asking to be shown to his own room—when Bucky emerges from the bathroom to see a bleary-eyed Sam sit up and pat the left side of the bed, his feet take him there without any conscious signal from his brain.

(Cute is why, when Bucky wakes up the next morning to Sam clinging to him like an octopus, he just kisses his forehead, turns off the alarm, and pulls him closer.)

#sambucky #zainab does ask meme things #my fic #anonymous #I can't believe this is what it took to finally get me to write some canonverse stuff

[firstelevens]

my beloved @sesamestreep tagged me to do this and I was going to wait to stagger these tag game posts but I'm a profoundly impatient creature, so...that did not happen

If you're seeing this, consider yourself tagged, because this is a fun thing! But just to be specific I'll tag @sylvia-morris @bisamwilson @flapperwitch @bhavvyyy @apatheticjoy @hot2go

#zainab does ask meme things #also in case you want to blacklist for reblogs throughout the week I am tagging this: #why did you follow me poll

[firstelevens]

and if yes, then for the taylor swift lyrics prompts: sambucky and nr. 13 and 14 (not necessarily combined, more so you can choose which one you like best or do both, i don’t know :)) 🩵✌️ btw I love, LOVE your sambucky f1 au 🫡

This is part of a canon divergence AU that I'm hoping to write more of this coming year. It just fit the spirit of the prompt, if not the letter of it, so I had to throw a little standalone prologue out there. Hopefully you'll see more of this soon!

13. never called it what it was

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

The voice comes from behind Sam, and he mentally congratulates himself for not jumping out of his skin in surprise. He knows that Bucky almost can’t help how quiet his footsteps are, but if Sam keeps getting snuck up on like this, his blood pressure is going to suffer.

“I know,” says Sam, and leaves it at that. He and Bucky have had this conversation a hundred times in the past two days, and the hundred and first is unlikely to be any different. He keeps his eyes on the lake in front of them and changes the subject. “Pretty sure it’s bad luck for us to see each other right now.”

“Pretty sure that only applies to real weddings,” is Bucky’s quiet reply.

Sam doesn’t know how to reply to that, so he doesn’t. He has the stray thought that they should work on the communication thing, maybe. His parents could have whole conversations in a single look across a room, in one touch of the arm. Sarah and Aaron would tie up the phone line for hours when they were first dating, even Sam and Riley had developed a language entirely their own.

In fairness, Sam thinks, those relationships had all had years to grow, and until forty-eight hours ago, Sam had no idea that he was getting married at all, much less to whom.

Privately, he thinks he might have jinxed it. After a five day period in which he’d re-materialized into existence, fended off an apocalypse, attended a funeral, and watched his best friend disappear to live seventy years of life without him, Sam had been certain that nothing could catch him by surprise anymore.

Then a woman in a crisp pantsuit had appeared at the lakeside property where they were hunkering down, carrying stacks of paperwork and photocopies of birth records from a hundred years ago. She’d sat down in a meeting room and reported to them what she’d discovered five years ago, right before being Snapped out of existence: that Bucky might have been from Brooklyn, but he hadn’t been born there, or anywhere else in America, and that the information had been easy enough to find that Ross’s people were sure to locate it as soon as the motion for a pardon was submitted.

It wasn’t hard to make the leap from there. Calling Bucky’s citizenship into question would be silly, but it would be enough of a distraction that Ross could mire the proceedings in bureaucracy and take Bucky back into custody in the interest of public safety. Sam didn’t imagine it would take too long for the paperwork to suddenly get lost after that, and with it would go any notion of Bucky’s freedom.

He remembered watching the Raft rise up out of the ocean for the first time. His whole life, the water had been home to him, but the desolation of that place had warped it somehow. 

That’s what Sam had been thinking of when he wracked his brain for a solution. That’s what he’d been thinking of when he turned to the lawyer and asked, “Well, what if he was married to an American citizen?”

Bucky, who’d spent the entire meeting until now sitting concerningly still, had suddenly whipped around to look at Sam, eyes wide. He’d felt Rhodey’s eyes on him, too, but the lawyer hadn’t blinked. In a few seconds, she’d sketched out a game plan on a legal pad, laying it out on the conference room table alongside all the other options she’d presented.

The first ‘You don’t have to do this’ had come shortly afterwards. Sam’s response had been the same then as it was now.

He feels Bucky come to stand beside him, his left hand resting on the railing a few inches from Sam’s right. The gold threaded through the vibranium sparkles in the sun, and he has the childish urge to trail his fingers over it.

“I’m disappointed,” says Sam, just to stop himself from reaching out. “I would’ve expected Princess Shuri to make a flashy black-tie addition to your arm for the wedding.”

“She added strobe lights, but they only work when it’s dark,” says Bucky, dry as a bone, and it startles a laugh out of Sam.

“At least we know the reception will be fun.”

Bucky hums in what he assumes is agreement. It’s quiet again for a moment, but he can sense Bucky shifting uncomfortably and he knows that there’s more.

“While, um– while we wait for the strobe lights to kick in, she did make us these.”

A crown of flowers suddenly appears in front of Sam, jasmine and jacaranda woven together with some kind of vine. He gingerly takes it from Bucky’s hand.

“Is…is this traditional? For a Wakandan wedding?”

“No,” comes another voice from behind them, and this time Sam does startle, nearly dropping the crown in the process. They both turn to Princess Shuri, dressed for a wedding and grinning cheekily at them both. “They’re not Wakandan tradition, but they are the kind of thing that Americans do when they get married abroad. I thought it might make the wedding pictures more believable.”

Sam laughs and perches the crown on his head. “You really do think of everything.”

Shuri’s mischievous smile softens. “I’m glad you’ve joined us here, Sam Wilson,” she says. “Nobody else appreciates my foresight.”

“Putting a bluetooth speaker in my arm is not foresight, Shuri,” says Bucky. “It’s just the product of a weird dream you had after staying up for forty hours in your lab.”

“It could be both,” protests the princess, laughing, and Sam can’t help but look over at Bucky, tired of sticking to peripheral glances.

He’s got the flower crown on his head, too, purple and white just like Sam’s is. His suit is a deep burgundy to complement Sam’s rust colored brocade, and Sam can only guess that Bucky received a visit similar to the one that Sam got from Ayo this morning. He’d opened the door to his quarters to find her holding a garment bag. She’d offered it to him and told Sam that she would be honored to see him marry James—it had taken Sam a moment to remember that his husband to be wasn’t actually named after a college mascot from Wisconsin—in the reds of her tribe. Sam, who’d spent the morning missing his family something fierce, had almost been too overwhelmed to thank her. 

Now, he can see that it was a two-pronged attack, and while Sam’s suit fits him pretty well, there’s clearly a tailor in Birnin Zana who had all of Bucky’s measurements stashed away on file somewhere, because the way that that jacket sits on his shoulders and hugs his arms could not possibly happen by accident.

When Sam manages to tear his eyes away, he only barely catches the end of Shuri’s sentence.

“...whenever you are,” she’s saying. “But I can stall, if you two want another moment here.”

“I think we’re good,” says Bucky. “How much time does anyone need to get ready for a fake wedding, anyway?”

Shuri tsks at him. “Perhaps you shouldn’t ask that question to someone who knows how long your spent on your hair this morning.”

Bucky makes a face at her, and Sam’s pretty sure that she blows a raspberry in response, but he’s distracted. Something about Bucky’s words feels wrong, even though all he’s doing is telling the truth.

He can’t get all caught up in that now, though. Instead, Sam turns to the princess. “I’m all ready to go, too.”

“Good!” says Shuri, clapping her hands decisively. “I’ll escort you in, Sam, if you will allow me. Bucky will follow shortly with Ayo.”

Sam tells Shuri that he’d be honored to walk with her and offers her his elbow, which she takes. They start to make their way to where the ceremony will take place, but Sam hesitates for a moment, looking back over his shoulder.

Bucky’s name comes out of his mouth before he can stop himself, and Bucky’s gaze immediately lands on him.

“Yeah?”

It’s not a fake wedding, Sam wants to tell him. You marry someone because you want them to stay and I think you should be able to stay. That’s not fake; that’s as real as anything else.

But he loses his nerve and just taps the flower crown on his head. “Your crown’s crooked. Just so you know.”

“Oh,” says Bucky. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

They look at each other for another beat, and Sam is so sure that Bucky is going to say something, but then he looks away, reaching up to fix his crown, and all Sam can do is let Shuri lead him away.

#sambucky #marriage of convenience fic is just so FUN y'all there's so much room for pining deliciousness #but also nobody ask how many versions of this prologue I wrote #zainab does ask meme things #taylor swift prompt fics #anon you sent this to me in November thank you for your patience #my fic #anonymous

[firstelevens]

song 25 + sambucky if you're still taking spotify wrapped prompts ☺️

25. Accidentally In Love by Counting Crows

When Sam’s phone goes off, he’s half asleep on his couch, buried under a small mountain of blankets and too congested to even really hear it that well. He only notices because it’s face-up on the coffee table and the screen catches his eye when it lights up.

He extends a hand out from his blanket nest and picks up the phone, wincing at the bright light of the display. 

It takes a second of squinting at the screen, but he finally manages to see that the notification is a text from Foggy: ‘any tips on how to handle your honors lit class? no subs available this morning so Hill has me covering’

‘Try not to show any weakness. They smell fear,’ Sam texts back. Then he adds, ‘There’s a Princess Bride DVD in the cupboard, you can get a key from Bucky.’

Foggy’s reply is predictably annoying: ‘does loverboy still think that you and me are dating? do I need to worry about him sabotaging my teaching in a fit of jealousy?’

Sam glares at the screen of his phone but it doesn’t do much, given that Foggy can’t see him. ‘Just for that you I’m not telling you where I put the Luhrmann Romeo + Juliet. You’ll just have to teach the ninth graders about iambic meter yourself next period.’

Foggy doesn’t get back to him for a while, which isn’t all that surprising. The beginning of the school day is hectic enough for a guidance counselor without having to unexpectedly cover another teacher’s class.

He stumbles to the kitchen to make himself tea, a blanket around his shoulders and his phone in his hand, but Foggy doesn’t reply for another twenty minutes. Sam’s head hurts too much for him to remember how neat the supply cupboard was, but he’s hoping it’s not so bad that Foggy’s just elbows deep in useless stuff.

After giving it another few minutes while he takes his next dose of cold medicine, he sends a text to check whether Foggy found what he was looking for.

The reply is immediate: ‘didn’t end up needing the dvd! I asked Bucky for the key and when he heard you were sick he said he’d handle it.’

‘Doesn’t he teach first period journalism?’

‘You’re sick so I won’t make fun of you for memorizing his schedule,’ Foggy writes, magnanimous as ever. Then: ‘there’s like five journalism students so he said he’d just combine them. said he could take your kids for the rest of the day too.’

Sam feels his jaw drop. Covering just one class is more than enough, but the entire day? When Bucky has almost a full slate of classes to teach, too? His face is suddenly all warm, and he’s at least fifty percent sure it’s not the fever.

His head is getting heavy again, and the screen is starting to hurt his eyes, but he manages to get a text out thanking Bucky for covering for him and assuring him that he can just put on movies for every single class.

He doesn’t have to wait long at all for the reply. ‘You’re welcome, Wilson. Now get some rest and stop worrying about your classes; they’ll be fine.’

Yawning widely, Sam types out a quick reply and takes Bucky’s advice, pulling the covers over his head and quickly falling back asleep.

Not having to field questions for subs or keep an eye on his email for questions from concerned students means that Sam isn’t repeatedly getting up when he’s supposed to be resting, and when he emerges from his blanket cocoon that afternoon, he can stand without getting dizzy for the first time in two days.

He celebrates by dragging himself into the shower, where the steam and the decongestant make it so that he regains his sense of smell, however briefly, and he feels more like a person than he has since Friday.

There’s probably an argument to be made for going back to bed, but Sam has never been great at being still, so he throws in a load of laundry and cleans up a bit while he’s on his feet. He’s about to make dinner, too, but then Sarah gives him a talking-to and makes him promise to order food instead, and Sam understands that she will instinctively know if he crosses her.

Sam already has the app open, scrolling through his options when his doorbell rings. For a second, he thinks that Sarah figured she couldn’t trust him to follow through and just ordered the food herself. Normally, he wouldn’t put it past her, but she’s getting the boat ready for a charter tomorrow, so he can’t imagine that she had the time or the cell service.

A peek through the curtains answers the question, though: there’s a familiar sedan parked in Sam’s driveway, a peeling Rutgers decal on the rear windshield.

“If you’re bringing me work to grade, I’m going to sneeze on you,” he declares, as he opens his front door to find Bucky waiting outside.

“I’m not a monster,” says Bucky, looking mildly offended at the thought. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” says Sam. “I can probably be back in tomorrow.”

Bucky narrows his eyes. “Or you could take a second sick day and actually get better instead of running yourself down again.”

“We’re supposed to be working on that stupid archival project tomorrow,” says Sam. “If I get another sanctimonious email from John about prioritizing my tasks, I’m gonna have an operatic meltdown in the middle of his classroom.”

“Entertaining as that would be, there’s probably another way,” Bucky says. “I’ll handle Walker for now. You just worry about getting better.”

Sam could probably push back if he really wanted to, but he can’t bring himself to be mad about Bucky looking out for him. “Okay,” he says, and Bucky’s eyebrows go up in surprise.

“Really? It’s that easy?”

“I blame the cold medicine,” says Sam. “I’ll be a pain in the ass again on Wednesday, I promise.”

Bucky smiles. “I look forward to it.”

“Well,” says Sam, after they’ve both been silent for a moment. “Thanks for coming to check on me; I really–”

“Wait!” says Bucky, and Sam stops in his tracks, eyebrows raised in question. “I didn’t just come to ask how you were doing. I, um– I wanted to bring you this, too.”

He holds out what Sam now realizes is a bag from the Thai place near the school.

“I would’ve made you soup myself, but I had to stay late with the yearbook kids, and my Ma would kill me if I half-assed her chicken soup recipe, but I know you like this place, so…”

Sam looks from Bucky to the bag of food and back, his eyes wide. “Thank you,” he says, and he can feel how soft his voice has gone around the edges. He probably should make some kind of joke to restore the natural order of things, but he can’t bring himself to do it. “You didn’t have to, Bucky, seriously.”

“I know,” he says, with a little shrug. “I wanted to.”

“Oh,” is all that Sam can manage to get out. “Okay.”

“It’s cold,” says Bucky, once Sam takes the bag of food out of his hands. “I should let you get back inside.”

He starts down the steps and Sam only belatedly remembers to call out, “I’ll see you on Wednesday!”

“See you then,” says Bucky, turning to face Sam and taking the last few steps to his car backwards. “Oh, and thanks for calling me cute!”

Sam feels his eyebrows lift in surprise. He wracks his brain to go over the last five minutes of conversation, but he comes up empty. “Wait, what?”

But all that Bucky does is hold up his cell phone before opening the door to his car. “Night, Sam!”

Suddenly, Sam remembers sending a text earlier today, clouded by the haze of exhaustion and cold medicine. His eyes go wide.

He didn’t, did he?

It’s only Sam’s dignity that keeps him from sprinting for his phone, staying in the doorway until Bucky’s car pulls away.

The second his headlights disappear, Sam throws the door shut and hurries to where his phone is charging on the kitchen counter. It takes two tries for him to unlock it with his face, and then he’s swiping over to his texts, opening up his conversation with Bucky and reading back the last few messages.

His eyes go wide as he reads his own words back.

‘It’s so cute that you use semicolons in your texts,’ he’d said to Bucky. ‘You know I’m not grading these for punctuation right?’

‘Maybe I just want to impress you,’ Bucky had replied.

And then, because that wasn’t enough, apparently Sam had replied, ‘Maybe you already do.’

He’s pretty sure that he’s never recovering from this, but just to make sure he learns his lesson, he texts a screenshot to Foggy with the message, ‘COLD MEDICINE SAM CANNOT BE TRUSTED!!!’

Foggy just sends him back a bunch of cry laughing emojis in response.

#lest you think this is punctual...this prompt is from LAST YEAR #sambucky #the teachers AU is BACK y'all #zainab does ask meme things #hope this anon is still around. sorry it took literally a year. #my fic #spotify wrapped prompts #sambucky and co teachers au

[firstelevens]

I must ask about WEE BABIES! do you see sambucky having kids in your au? if yes, soon after they're married or wayyy into the future? hypothetically what would happen if *gasp* their child doesn't have a sweet tooth? 😱

The answer to this question would have been a clear no a few months ago but now I think it’s fifty-fifty. If they did have a kid, it would probably be a couple years into their marriage, and if that kid did not have a sweet tooth, I think it would go a little something like this:

“This is your fault, you know.”

“My fault?” 

“One hundred percent,” says Bucky, lifting their son into his lap and narrowly avoiding dragging his knuckles through ketchup. He’s opting to ignore the way that Riley dramatically flopped onto the table after pushing away his plate, a move that definitely came straight out of the Barnes playbook.

“You’re blaming me for the fact that he doesn’t like cake,” Sam says, as he brings their plates over, already dished out. The era of serving dishes on the table ended right around when Riley figured out how to get a grip on serving spoons and they haven’t gone back yet.

“He knows that—thanks, sweetheart—he knows that Daddy can’t carry him if Daddy’s carrying cake, and now he resents an entire genre of food.”

Sam snorts. “Yeah, it’s that and not the fact that he just doesn’t like sweet things.”

“He did act like we tried to poison him that time we fed him ice cream,” muses Bucky. “Doesn’t explain why he took one look at the chicken nuggets and decided that they were cake, too.”

Riley, not one to let his opinions go unvoiced, shifts his face slightly away from where it’s tucked into Bucky’s chest and cries out, “No cake!”

“No cake,” repeat Sam and Bucky, practiced enough to be in sync now.

“I think it’s the color,” says Sam, picking up one of the nuggets to examine it. “And I guess they’re shaped kind of like the gingerbread he tried and hated at Sarah’s.”

“I can’t believe cookies don’t get a pass, either,” says Bucky. “What are we supposed to bribe him with when he gets older?”

“Cucumbers,” says Sam. “And cherry tomatoes, when we’re desperate.”

“This kid’s being raised by two semi-professional bakers and he’s got the same diet as AJ’s pet turtle.”

Sam laughs out loud, and Riley immediately turns to look at him like he doesn’t want to miss it. Bucky can’t blame him, even if it does mean having to scramble to hold Riley secure in his lap as he wriggles around.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to hold him?” asks Sam. “How are you gonna eat?”

“I’ll be fine,” says Bucky. “One of us skipped lunch today, and it wasn’t me.”

Sam’s eyes narrow. “How’d you know that?”

“Cass ratted you out,” Bucky says. “How does a man spend ten hours a day surrounded by food and somehow still miss a meal?”

“J and I shot an extra video today so I could take tomorrow off,” says Sam, and points with his fork towards Bucky’s plate without interrupting himself. “I got distracted.”

Bucky takes the hint and looks down to see what put that little grin on Sam’s face: Riley’s chubby hand reaching out to grab one of the vareniki on Bucky’s plate. They both watch as he examines it, then grin wider as he seems to deem it far enough from cake and takes a bite.

It’s important that they not hover, so Bucky makes himself continue the conversation even though he’d much rather watch Riley copy the way Sam is eating.

“I swear, I’m gonna start setting a reminder on your phone like old people have for their pills.”

“Yeah, ‘cause what I need in a kitchen with six ovens and a dozen batches of proving dough at any given minute is more timers.”

“Then prepare for Cass to keep– wait, zaychik, that’s not a normal cucumber; I don’t think you’ll…”

Bucky trails off as Riley takes a bite of a cornichon, braced for his horrified reaction to the sourness. Instead, all they get is a thoughtful hum before he takes a second bite.

“What the hell?” mouths Sam, and all Bucky can do is shrug.

“Try the beets,” he mouths back at Sam, and watches as Sam spears a vinegar-dressed beet with his fork. A second later, Riley picks one up, too. This time, sweet doesn’t seem to be an issue, and he immediately goes for another one before turning back to the dumplings.

At some point, Sam’s phone came out of his pocket, and now he’s got it pointed at Bucky, shoulders shaking with laughter.

“What have we learned today, Buck?”

“That apparently you could’ve been wielding your influence way more often at the dinner table?”

“Bucky.”

“We’ve learned that sometimes picky eaters aren’t picky eaters,” he says, with a laugh. “Sometimes they’re just Russian.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Hey, just 'cause I'm teaching him about his family, doesn't mean you're off the hook for the cake thing.”

“Papa, no cake!”

“No cake, buddy,” Bucky intones solemnly, and kisses the side of Riley’s head. "Guess we'll just do a giant bowl of beets for the third birthday then, huh?"

(This time, when Sam throws his head back and laughs, both Riley and Bucky stop what they're doing to admire him.)

#thank you jules!!! #i guess the short answer to your question is 'panic a little bit and then feed him pickles' #local woman writes AU of own AU; dozens of circa 2012 tumblr denizens emerge to yell 'AU-ception!' #sambucky #the gbbo au #my fic #zainab does ask meme things #hot2go #next one's gonna be shorter I SWEAR

[firstelevens]

WIP Writing Poll

once again, I find myself with too many ideas and if I don't settle on one to write I'm just gonna keep coming up with new ones, so I'm doing this again in the interest of making progress on SOMETHING

rules: make a 24-hour poll with the names of your wips, let it run, then write one sentence for every vote the winner received.

(I know people usually tag others to do this but given that I was not tagged I can only say...if you see this and you also need some writerly motivation, consider yourself tagged.)

Descriptions under the cut for anyone who wants to operate on more than vibes alone!

roses are pink, your feet really stink is a modern!Bucky/Cap!Sam AU where Bucky is AJ Wilson's third grade teacher and ends up in a little bit of a feud with his student's uncle

pumpkin, pumpkin, you're gonna kill me is a future fic from my and @sesamestreep's Bake Off AU, where Bucky ends up having to host one of Sam's baking videos and the internet loses it

what d'you want to be married to me for anyhow? is the Sweet Home Alabama AU that I posted here, which I am now desperately tempted to write a follow-up for

high on a hill lived a lonely assassin is the Sound of Music AU, with Sam as Maria and Bucky as Captain Von Trapp, featuring four Barnes sisters, Alpine, and Gideon Wilson in the role of Mother Superior.

I know a little chapel on the boulevard is a canon divergence fic set after Endgame, where Sam and Bucky end up in a marriage of convenience when something threatens Bucky's pardon, a little excerpt of which was posted here.

google: do any of these places actually celebrate valentine's day is five Valentine's Days over the time that Sam and Bucky have known each other, spanning from just after TWS to the Thunderbolts/Cap 4 era and covering the different things they've come to mean to each other since.

#sambucky #zainab does ask meme things #listen last time I did this I ended up writing the sentences for all the fics that got votes and not just the winner #and then three of those fics even wound up getting posted #so you know. vote your conscience and tamper with these results as enthusiastically as you'd like; it all works out in the end

[firstelevens]

🎤 or 📷 for the sambucky prompt? If you'd like!

I may have played a little fast and loose with the prompt, but I was inspired! This one got pretty long, so it's posted on AO3 if anyone would prefer to read it there.

📸 Accidental Public Confession

“I hate time travel,” groans Sam, for at least the fifth time today.

“A little louder, Sam; I’m not sure they heard you across the Hudson,” hisses Bucky. 

So far, they’ve been doing a decent job of blending in. Any gawking that they did when they got here seemed to go unnoticed, because even a hundred years in the future, New York City is the kind of place where tourists roam wide-eyed and slow down the pace of the sidewalks. Still, until it’s clear how much the world has changed in this place where the Quantum Realm spat them out, it’s best to keep a low profile.

They decide to head for Bleecker Street, in hopes that the Sanctum Sanctorum has survived and they can get some answers, but they’ve only walked a few blocks when Sam stops dead in his tracks and grabs Bucky’s hand to stop him, too.

Bucky’s first instinct is to check that Sam is okay, but then Sam grabs his chin and turns his head to face where he’s been pointing: the building that used to be Avengers Tower, still standing. There are people milling around outside, but banners hung by the entrance still have the Stark Industries logo on them, and if Bucky’s few interactions with Morgan Stark have been anything to go by, there’s a good chance that the people in that building are smart enough to help them figure out what went wrong. He realizes belatedly that Sam’s hand is still in his and abruptly lets go, nodding towards the building as they change course.

It’s only when they cross the street and get closer to the entrance that the two of them realize that that won’t be the case. The building looks the same from the outside, but now, in brass letters, the sign above the doors declares it the Smithsonian Museum of American Superheroics.

Sam and Bucky share a look for a moment, silently agreeing to head inside. The cloaking devices on their gear hold up just fine under the scanners by the door, and they step into a sunlit atrium, full of families and tour groups looking around in awe.

Beside him, Sam accepts a map held out by a docent and unfolds it. “Look,” he says, tapping at a spot on the map. “There’s a research and preservation wing on the fifth floor. You think they’d be able to help us? Or point to someone who could?”

“Maybe,” says Bucky, frowning as he looks around, “but maybe it’s worth figuring out how folks here and now feel about us before we go barging in.”

There’s a considering noise from Sam, and then he looks up from the map, pointing towards a dramatically lit archway off the atrium. Hanging beside it is a banner that reads, ‘The Star Spangled Man: Bearers of the Captain America Legacy.’ “We could start there, maybe.”

They cross the atrium, flanked by groups of tiny school kids, and make their way into the exhibition room, its low light a contrast to the bright atrium. There’s a hush in the space, the kids shushed into apparent reverence by their chaperones.

The first room is a lot like the one Bucky remembers from the museum in DC: the story of Steve’s time in the war, with a small feature on each of the Commandos. There’s a section dedicated to Isaiah Bradley and the people whose lives he saved, though it doesn’t linger on what happened to him afterwards. Then it moves on to Steve’s time with the Avengers, capped by the Sokovia Accords and the battle against Thanos. Bucky is relieved to have seen very little mention of himself, though he’s confused by the lack of Sam in any of the exhibit so far.

They follow the path into the next room, and Bucky’s unasked questions are answered. Dead center, in a glass case large enough to accommodate the suit’s full wingspan, is a replica of Sam’s first Cap uniform.

Bucky looks over to Sam, whose face is doing something complicated as he looks at the uniform on display. When his face hasn’t cleared after a moment or two, Bucky murmurs, “Bad research. They should fire whoever did this.”

Sam’s face immediately goes from warring emotions to pure confusion. “What? Why?”

Keeping as straight a face as he can, Bucky gestures to the wax figure wearing Sam’s uniform. “Look at this guy. This mannequin has never even heard of leg day. How’s anyone gonna make a Sam Wilson figurine with legs this skinny?”

It earns an quiet laugh from Sam, who gently cuffs Bucky on the shoulder and shakes his head as he walks away. Much as Bucky would like to stick by Sam and keep him laughing, it occurs to him that this will go faster if they cover more ground, so he starts at the opposite side of the room.

As the two of them work towards the middle, Bucky skims every plaque that he comes across, looking for signs that he and Sam showing up at a superhero facility might be unwelcome, but there aren’t any. Weirder than that is the fact that Bucky is almost halfway around the room, and the exhibit has only covered the first few years of Sam’s time as Cap. He knows they’re not supposed to engage with too much information from the future, but it seems strange that he’s halfway through the section about the work they’ve done together, and the timeline has already caught up to the mission that he and Sam were on two weeks ago.

Sam looks equally confused as the two of them approach each other, stopping in front of a glass case where Bucky is stunned to see his own face looking at him from the pictures on display. He’s spent enough time with the Wilsons to pick out everyone in the family photos—Titi and Gideon and both of Sam’s parents, all the people he’s gotten to know and love in Delacroix—but Bucky’s face crops up everywhere. He’s in the Christmas card photo, and beaming proudly in the background while AJ shows off his little league trophy, and manning the grill with Sam at a cookout. There’s the pictures of the team that Kate has been taking lately with her polaroid camera, shots from news stories and from the time they invited a photographer along to document a training exercise, and in every single one, Bucky is by Sam’s side.

He takes a few steps back to see the entirety of the display and feels his jaw drop. This entire section of the exhibit is specifically about him and Sam, and he might be able to convince himself that it was about their partnership in the field if it wasn’t for the words in his own handwriting, projected against the backdrop of the display case: the crisp, slanting cursive that all his teachers used to applaud him for, spelling out the words, ‘until the end of time.’

Bucky knows those words, knows exactly where and when he wrote them down, but what he doesn’t know is how anyone could have seen them. He keeps that letter with him, locked in a desk drawer and tucked away from prying eyes. Nobody’s read it but him; he never even bothered to send it. He’d just written the letter to put his feelings into the world somewhere, never intending for them to be anyone’s problem but his own, and now…

It suddenly strikes him that Sam has been strangely quiet this whole time, and when Bucky looks over at him, his eyes are wide and apologetic. Inside the display case, right at his eye level, is the letter that Bucky locked away six months ago and has tried not to think about every day since.

“I’m so sorry,” Sam starts to say, and Bucky’s not sure he can stand to hear it.

“It’s fine,” he says, like it’s not rapidly getting harder to breathe. “It’s– you didn’t– it’s not a big deal. It isn’t.”

“I shouldn’t have read it,” Sam’s saying. “I didn’t realize what it was; I saw that it was addressed to me, and I read the date and I figured it would be something I’d recognize, but–”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“Still,” says Sam. “I’m sorry.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Bucky says tightly. He tries not to think about all the stupid things he said in that letter, all the damage that he’s just done to this friendship that Sam will be too kind to acknowledge. “Let’s just go home and we can pretend it never happened.”

Something flickers over Sam’s face before he clenches his jaw and squares his shoulders, nodding briskly. “Of course,” he says.

It’s Sam who walks away first, bound for the research wing entrance at the end of the exhibit. Bucky watches him go for a moment before turning back to the display case for one last glance. For all that he never wanted his letter to get out, Bucky can’t help but feel grateful that this is the part of his legacy that’s made it into a museum. He knows intimately the mark that the Soldier left on the world, and while that blood isn’t going anywhere, Bucky’s not even sure he knows how to voice his relief that at least in this one building, his place in history is marked by love.

As he looks over the whole display, his eyes fall to the bottom of the plaque, past the paragraph that recounts the details of his and Sam’s partnership. In small print across the bottom, there’s an acknowledgment of where the items in the display come from: ‘The Smithsonian thanks the Wilson family and the Wilson-Barnes Estate for their generous donation of these artifacts and their invaluable advice and support in the arrangement of this exhibit.’

Bucky blinks.

The Wilson family and the Wilson-Barnes Estate.

The Wilson-Barnes Estate.

Wilson-Barnes.

He has a sudden flashback to sitting down with a bunch of lawyers a few months ago, going over the basics of a superhero will. He hadn’t thought that he needed one at the time, but Sam had pointed out to Bucky that several decades of military backpay would just end up reverting to the state if Bucky died without a next of kin, and something about that left a bad taste in Bucky’s mouth. He’d ended up writing something simple, directing what he had to some charities and setting the rest aside for AJ and Cass, not that he’s told Sam or Sarah yet.

But even if the donations were made by the boys on his behalf, surely that would just constitute the Barnes Estate. Wilson hyphen Barnes means something shared, means that there was some legal reason why Sam and Bucky’s belongings would be dealt with together, and though it seems impossibly out of reach, Bucky can only think of one reason why that would happen.

He thinks again about how long Sam had stared at that letter, so much longer than it would have taken to read it just the once. He thinks about the emotion that had flashed across his face when Bucky had told him to forget about it. He’d assumed at the time that it might have been panic or frustration, but what if it had been something else entirely? What if Sam’s brusqueness wasn’t about the letter, but what had happened afterward?

Bucky can feel the tiniest amount of hope beginning to beat behind his ribcage, and after months and months of trying to squash it down, he lets it grow.

Across the room, he finds Sam, waiting by the next room of the exhibit and watching him. When Sam spreads his hands in the universal gesture for what the hell, dude, we’re trying to do something here, Bucky feels affection thrum through his veins, and he half-jogs over to where Sam is standing.

“I hope you have a plan for what to–” Sam is starting to say, but Bucky cuts him off again.

“We should talk about it,” he blurts. When Sam’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, he clarifies: “The letter. We should talk about the letter.

Immediately, Sam’s face softens. “We don’t have to, Buck. You didn’t mean for anyone to see it. It’s okay.”

But Bucky is already shaking his head. “I did,” he says, trying his best to push past the fear that had made him hide the letter in the first place. “I meant for you to see it. I just…I let my brain talk me out of it. I shouldn’t have.”

His words hang in the air for a moment, thick between them. Then, before either of them can say anything else, the door to the research wing swings open and a lady in a lab coat steps out. She has two sets of glasses perched on her head and a jeweler’s lens around her neck, and when she sees the two of them standing by the door, she does a cartoon-perfect double take.

“Oh, shit,” she says, her eyes going wide.

“Oh, good, you know who we are,” says Sam pleasantly, switching from Sam Wilson to Cap right in front of Bucky’s eyes. “Any chance you could help us find our way back home?”

When the still-shocked museum employee manages a weak yes and motions for them to follow her, Sam reaches for Bucky’s hand again to pull him along.

This time, Bucky doesn’t let go. 

#sambucky #zainab does ask meme things #abarbaricyalp #thank you for sending this in! it fully ran away with me #my fic

[firstelevens]

Hey Zainab! taking this moment for a second to just say I see you around and I think you're cool. Anyways, for the SamBucky ask - either: 👔 Zipping or Buttoning His Jacket for/Putting a Tie on Him or 💥 A Surprise Encounter please

Hi, Mexi! That's so kind of you to say! I think you're super cool, too! Also both of these were such great options that it took FOREVER for me to choose--thanks for sending them in!

👔 Zipping or Buttoning His Jacket for/Putting a Tie on Him

Sam’s been an Avenger for six months, and he’s still not used to the glamor of it all. Yeah, there are days when an EMP fries his wings and he finds himself parachuting straight into a swamp, but then there are nights like this, where they get put up in an opulent hotel and invited to a gala as thanks for foiling a kidnapping plot against the Governor of Gibraltar.

The wind on the water reminds Sam of home, so he’s got the sliding door to the balcony open, the smell of sunshine blowing into his suite along with the breeze. He takes little peeks at the sunset while he gets ready, crisply ironing his shirt and adjusting his cufflinks—little silver crawdads, a present from Sarah on his birthday a few years ago—before contending with his tie.

Normally it would be a snap; a lifetime of doing his tie for church every Sunday meant that a half-Windsor knot had been muscle memory for years now. At some point during today’s rescue mission, though, Sam had managed to hurt his right hand enough that it’s a lot slower going than it should be, and trying to make his left hand do what his right hand should is just making his brain hurt.

He’s distracted, restarting the knot for the third time when he hears a noise on his balcony and whips around. His gun is on the other side of the bedroom, locked up with the rest of his gear, but Sam’s always got a knife within reach, and he’s throwing it at the figure in the doorway before they’ve even resolved into anything more than shadow.

When the person easily catches it, it’s with the sound of metal clinking against metal, and Sam feels the tension immediately leave his body.

“Turning your back on an unlocked door?” asks Bucky, sounding entirely too smug. “What are they even teaching you up at Stark’s fancy compound?”

“How to draw annoying cyborgs to your hotel suite, apparently,” says Sam, and very deliberately turns his back to Bucky as he starts in on his tie again.

“Sweetheart, if you wanted me in your bedroom, all you had to do was ask,” says Bucky. Sam doesn’t need to look in the mirror to know that he’s smirking.

“Apparently, I didn’t even have to do that,” he shoots back. He’s not sure if he imagines the way that Bucky’s neck flushes behind him. Sam means to say something else teasing, in part because it usually seems like Bucky could use the laugh, but then he realizes he’s looped the tie the wrong way around again and yanks it loose for a fourth time, mumbling an expletive as he does.

“The hell are you even doing, Wilson; how’d you get this far without learning to tie a tie?”

Sam holds up his bandaged right hand in response, and Bucky tuts disapprovingly. He’s by Sam’s side in three paces, huffing as he turns Sam by the shoulder.

“Some team leader Rogers is,” Bucky mutters, grabbing the ends of Sam’s tie and smoothing them out. “Doesn’t he know that—”

Bucky cuts himself off, finally seeming to realize that he’s got his hands on Sam, in closer proximity than the two of them have ever been. Sam watches as Bucky’s eyes come up to meet his, then drop back down to his grip on Sam’s tie.

A grimace flickers across his face, and he starts to pull his hands away, but Sam settles his own hands on top of Bucky’s.

“What?” he asks, with a grin that he hopes is encouraging. “You’re gonna let me go out there looking all scruffy? Leave me hanging so Steve can steal the spotlight?”

The tightness in Bucky’s jaw eases just a bit. He breathes in once, twice, thrice before looking up at Sam again. There’s a question in his eyes that Sam hopes is answered when he nods.

Half a beat later, Bucky is smoothing out the ends of the tie again and working on a knot, focused enough on his task that Sam can take the opportunity to study him: the dark fringe of his eyelashes, the slight curl of his hair in the sea air. There’s an almost-healed cut by his lip that Sam wants to ask about, and dark circles like bruises that he knows not to bring up.

He’s so distracted cataloguing the changes on Bucky’s face that he doesn’t realize that the tie has already been tied, not until Bucky smoothes it out one last time.

“There,” he says, bringing his hands back down and stepping away from Sam. “Now you’re not such a disgrace to whoever taught you to tie one of those.”

Sam snorts, shaking his head. “I’m sure my daddy would be thrilled to know you protected his legacy.”

He gets a small smile for that in return, just the barest lift at the corner of Bucky’s mouth, but much more real than the teasing smirk from before. It makes warmth thrum through Sam’s veins.

“Thanks for the help, Barnes.”

“Anytime,” says Bucky, and makes for the balcony again. 

Sam knows better than to try to keep him where he is, and this is more of a goodbye than he usually gets, so he’s surprised to hear Bucky say his name from the doorway as he turns to put on his dinner jacket.

“Hey, Wilson?”

“Yeah?”

“Tie or no tie, nobody else has got a shot at that spotlight with you around.”

Sam feels his jaw drop, but Bucky’s gone before he can even turn around, the balcony door clicking shut behind him.

#sambucky #thatmexisaurusrex #zainab does ask meme things #idk what this is y'all it just happened #'ficlet' is a state of mind okay #my fic

[firstelevens]

and 22 for sambucky, perhaps?? 🍯

22. don't say yes

It is, technically speaking, Sam’s fault that he ends up where he does. Usually, there’s a little more nuance, but this time around, it’s completely on him.

His mother had been fond of saying that eavesdroppers were bound to hear things they didn’t like, and little Sam had only had to test this theory a few times before deciding that she was right. The lesson had worn off at some point, though, as high school and college came and went, and as keeping your ear to the ground made all the difference as a soldier and later as a superhero.

But Sam doesn’t mean to eavesdrop on Bucky. Not really, anyway. 

He pulls up to Bucky’s newly-purchased cottage and goes around back to drop off Sarah’s spare wheelbarrow. All afternoon at the docks yesterday, Bucky had been making noises about working on the garden at the new place, setting up a vegetable patch and hauling around some of the bricks left behind by the last owners to make up a little retaining wall.

When Sam had asked just how much experience Bucky had with growing vegetables, he’d mentioned that his Ma had kept a victory garden during the war, and then gone quiet until the boys burst in and demanded his attention. Bucky had gone back home not long after, and Sam had figured that the wheelbarrow and the extra gardening tools he’d pulled from the shed might be some kind of peace offering.

He sets the trowels and gardening gloves on the back porch and leaves the wheelbarrow nearby. It’s more habit than anything else that has him stopping to examine the boards and the porch railing, checking for rot or cracks. Sam doesn’t even realize that Bucky’s bedroom window is open, not until his voice carries out of it and into the yard.

“I promise I’ll be back soon,” he’s saying. “It’s just a quick errand.”

Sam furrows his eyebrows. He’d maybe expected Bucky to be on the phone, but it sounds like he’s talking to someone who’s there with him.

“The hardware store is close,” says Bucky, and the warmth in his voice is unmistakeable, “and the nursery’s not that far, either. I’ll be an hour, tops.”

He tries not to, but Sam can’t help but strain his hearing, trying to catch the reply from whoever is up there with Bucky. He can’t make out any words, but that doesn’t make him feel better. It’s 8 AM on a Saturday; whoever it is could easily just be tired.

It’s far too easy a leap from that particular conclusion to just why someone might be at Bucky’s house in the morning and too tired to really speak. Sam feels queasy all of a sudden.

Bucky had turned down an invitation to have dinner with them last night, and he’d left the docks in the late afternoon instead of hanging out like he usually did. Sam had assumed that he was going back to work on the house while it was still light out, but maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe Bucky had gone into town, or to a bar somewhere. Maybe Bucky had brought someone home with him, and that someone had stayed the night.

Sam is just trying to convince himself that there’s a perfectly platonic, rational explanation to all this when he hears Bucky’s voice again.

“Baby,” Bucky says, somewhere between affectionate and chiding. “Sam’s gonna be here any second; you know I can’t just leave him hanging.”

That’s not how you talk to a one night stand, Sam realizes, with a sinking feeling. That’s how you talk to someone who’s been around for a little while, and who plans to stay that way.

Had he missed the signs somewhere? Had he misread all those conversations that he’d thought were moments with Bucky, even when they’d been on their own separate world-saving missions? All the text messages and the scraps of time they’d caught together in New York or DC or here in Delacroix?

Bucky shyly admitting that he’d put an offer in on a house in town had seemed like a confirmation of something, like establishing solid ground for them to take those first steps together. Now, though–now Sam can’t help but wonder if that solid ground isn’t his to tread, if Delacroix was the choice not because it’s Sam’s home but because it’s someone else’s.

“You’ve got to give me my shirt back, Sweets; I can’t go out without it,” comes Bucky’s voice again, and this time, Sam makes himself step back, intent on hustling back to the truck and booking it out of here before Bucky realizes he was there at all.

He’s already drawing up an excuse in his head, trying to strike the right balance of a reasonable last second cancelation and nothing that’ll worry Bucky too much, but the extra distraction proves to be the last thing he needs. Sam runs right into the wheelbarrow, which falls against the nearby stack of bricks with an extra-loud clang, reverberating outwards like a bell.

“Fuck,” Sam murmurs, and has just enough time to right the wheelbarrow before Bucky is calling out the window.

“Sam, is that you?” Sam doesn’t say yes at first, still trying to salvage his escape plan, and Bucky calls out again. “Sam? Are you there?”

It’s only latent self-preservation instincts that remind him it’s probably a bad idea to make the former Winter Soldier think that there’s someone skulking around his property uninvited, and he finally makes himself answer.

“Yeah,” Sam calls back. “It’s me, sorry.”

There’s no response for a moment, and then the door to the back porch opens. Bucky is smoothing down his t-shirt like he just pulled it on, and Sam’s stomach lurches just a little.

“Hey,” Bucky is saying, “sorry I’m late; I just got caught up with- wait, what’s that?”

It takes Sam a beat to realize where he’s pointing, distracted as he is by Bucky’s ruffled hair and the pillowmarks on his face. Even as part of him grapples with what he’s just learned, he can’t help but feel happy that Bucky seems to have slept through the night.

“It’s a wheelbarrow,” he finally manages to say, like it’s not the most obvious thing in the world. Sam clears his throat, but it does nothing to ease the sudden tightness he feels there. “Thought you might need one, for your garden and all. Plus, uh- we had some spare trowels and stuff at the house. No sense in buying new ones if you don’t need them.”

Bucky looks as surprised as he always does when he’s on the receiving end of a gesture like this, but he thanks Sam warmly. “If I supply coffee and snacks, d’you think Captain America might throw in his help along with the wheelbarrow?” he asks, grinning. 

Sam smiles in spite of himself. “Maybe, but it better be some fancy coffee.”

“I think I can make that happen,” says Bucky, nodding. “You about ready to head out? Is there anything we need to take with us to the hardware store?”

“About that,” says Sam, trying to keep his breathing even, “I was thinking maybe it would be better if we rescheduled? I, uh- I know weekends can be busy, and maybe there’s stuff that needs your attention, so we can-”

“Sam, this is the stuff that needs my attention,” Bucky says. His eyebrows furrow after a second, and realization crosses his face. “Oh, wait, do you have something you need to do? Is the motor still giving you guys trouble on the boat? Because we can just head over there instead; the hardware store can wait, but Sarah can’t miss that afternoon charter.”

It would make for a good excuse, but the boat is just fine, and if Sam said otherwise, Bucky would insist on coming along to help. “It’s not that,” Sam says. “Sarah’s all set for the charter. I just didn’t want to take you away from anything important, or pressing, or, I don’t know, more enjoyable than a trip to the hardware store and the nursery. You know Hank and Lottie are going to want ten minutes of gossip for every ten minutes of shopping.”

“I’m counting on it,” Bucky says, giving Sam a slightly odd look. “I want to hear what the deal is with that new couple who just bought the flower shop.”

Sam shrugs. “Just want you to remember that it might take a while, that’s all.”

Bucky waves a hand. “I have time,” he says. “Might even be able to squeeze in a trip to the coffee place so I can put a down payment on your help with the garden.”

That, weirdly, is the final straw for Sam. He may be quietly jealous of this unknown person who’s loath to let Bucky out of bed in the mornings, but they deserve some consideration, at least. If Sam’s partner was going to spend the day gallivanting around after promising to be home as soon as possible, he’d want to know.

Just as Sam opens his mouth to finally address the elephant in the room, Bucky is continuing on, as oblivious as ever. “Let me just grab my shoes,” he’s saying. “And then we can head out.”

He turns and opens the backdoor again, but just before Bucky can step inside, they’re met with the loudest, most plaintive meow that Sam has ever heard. It’s followed by a few more: short, sharp mews of complaint, very clearly addressed at the person deemed responsible.

For a second, Sam’s brain processes ‘there is a cat in Bucky’s house and it’s mad at him’ to mean that a stray cat got in through an open window and found that it couldn’t get out. Then he looks back at Bucky and finds him sitting in the doorway, now cradling a tiny white kitten in his left arm.

The cat is mewling loudly at him, with more force than such a small animal should have, and Bucky…Bucky is nodding along to the complaints, murmuring comforting nonsense back. 

“I know, I know, you told me not to go,” he says, gently petting the cat. “Sorry, baby. I should’ve taken you with me, huh?”

There’s one last meow in response, softer than the others, before the cat curls up in Bucky’s arms.

Sam, still astonished, glances from the upstairs bedroom window to Bucky and the cat and back again.

Sorry, baby, Bucky had said. You told me not to go.

“Wait, you were talking to your cat?” asks Sam.

Bucky frowns, looking confused. “That’s what this animal is called, yes. And I’m currently talking to her, so…yes to that, too?”

“No, I mean earlier,” says Sam, before he can stop himself. He feels his eyes go a little wide.

“Earlier when?”

“Uh, nothing. Never mind. Are you gonna introduce me to your cat, or what?”

But Bucky’s persistence is one of his best and most annoying qualities. “Earlier when, Sam?”

With the same consideration that he gives to a particularly risky throw of the shield, Sam makes himself answer. “Just when I got here. A few minutes ago, that’s all.”

“You heard me talking?”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “Your window was open and I was bringing the wheelbarrow around. I heard you saying you’d be home soon, and calling someone pet names, and I made an assumption. I guessed wrong, that’s all.”

Bucky arches an eyebrow. “So you were eavesdropping, then?”

“I was doing a favor for my friend and bringing him a wheelbarrow that’s almost as ancient as he is,” says Sam, his voice dry. “Not my fault you project like you’re on Broadway and aiming for the cheap seats.”

That gets a snort of amusement, at least. Sam steps onto the porch and takes a seat beside Bucky, holding out his hand for the cat to sniff.

“Sam, this is Alpine,” Bucky says. “Alpine, this is Sam.”

Alpine seems to deem Sam trustworthy enough, because she settles back down in Bucky’s arms and doesn’t tense when Sam runs a gentle finger along her back.

“How long have you had her?” asks Sam. “How’d I miss this cat hair on your extensively black wardrobe?”

“Two weeks,” says Bucky, “and I now own about a dozen lint rollers.”

“That’ll do it, I guess.” Sam laughs quietly. “You know the boys are going to want to meet her as soon as possible, right?”

“Sarah asked me to pick them up from school on Monday; I thought I might bring them by to see her then.”

Sam hums in acknowledgment and wonders if he’ll ever get used to the way Bucky has neatly folded himself into their lives. 

He doesn’t get a chance to ponder it for very long, though, because then he feels eyes on him, a vibranium shoulder pressed into his own.

He has about two seconds to brace himself before Bucky asks, “So if you heard me talking to Alpine and didn’t realize I was talking to a cat, who did you think I was talking to?”

It’s been a long time since Sam acted or felt like a teenager, and he’s not proud to say that he defaults to a classic 16 year old response: shrugs a shoulder and says, “I don’t know,” as nonchalantly as he can,

It does not work.

“Sam,” says Bucky. “Seriously, it’s Saturday morning. Who would be at my house at 8 AM on a Saturday?”

Sam shrugs again, but this time he makes himself answer, even if he can’t take his eyes off his lap. “Someone who fell asleep here, maybe.”

“Fell asleep here? What does that even-”

“Buck, I know the aw-shucks routine was a real hit in the forties, but you don’t need to go around pretending not to know what sex is now.” Sam means for it to sound light, but the words feel sharp as he says them.

“That’s not what I was trying to do,” says Bucky, and Sam might be imagining it, but there’s something careful in his voice now. “I just didn’t think of it.”

“Right,” says Sam, flat. “Of course not.”

Because only someone with a definitely-more-than-a-crush on their friend and superhero partner would hear three sentences through an open window and immediately assume that they had a romantic rival. Normal people with normal feelings about their friend and superhero partner wouldn’t be fazed.

Part of Sam is searching for an exit strategy again, trying to figure out the best way to wriggle out of this so he can contend with the embarrassment in peace for a while before things go back to normal. He would break out an excuse to get going, except that Bucky is still talking.

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t have come to mind before,” he’s saying, and Sam wants very badly for this conversation to end so he can be swallowed by the earth. “I just, um- I haven’t thought about entertaining people that way in a while, because there’s someone I’m interested in.”

It’s a medical miracle, Sam thinks, that he can feel like someone has punched him in the stomach and yet his curiosity still manages to seize control of his mouth and ask questions. “You sure you don’t have that backwards? It feels like the sort of thing that would be on your mind more, not less.”

He feels Bucky shrug beside him. “We’re taking it slow, I think.”

“Oh?” asks Sam, suddenly beset by chaste visions of Bucky sharing a milkshake with someone at the retro themed diner in Chalmette.

“Yeah,” says Bucky. “Not even any real dates or anything yet.”

Blessedly, the diner and the milkshake disappear. “No dates at all?” asks Sam, because apparently he likes pressing on bruises.

“No dates,” echoes Bucky. “But errands, sometimes.”

Sam furrows his eyebrows, finally turning to look at Bucky. “Errands?”

Bucky nods. “Yeah, errands. Like, grocery store runs, or gardening,” he says, and it seems like the corners of his mouth are turning up. “Or even trips down to the hardware store and the nursery.”

Sam blinks. “Wait, what?”

There’s clearly a grin on Bucky’s face now. “I mean, I’m assuming that the hardware store doesn’t count as a date, because if it were a real date, I’d be getting flowers instead of a wheelbarrow.”

There’s a rushing in Sam’s ears as he processes Bucky’s words. For a moment, he can’t seem to make his mouth work. When he finally does, his voice is embarrassingly creaky, like he hasn’t spoken in days. “Next time,” he croaks. “Next time, it’s flowers, I promise.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, his smile widening. “Next time, then.”

“Okay,” echoes Sam. “It’s a date.”

#me: i'll stick to 500 words #me 2800 words later: oops #sambucky #sambucky fanfiction #zainab does ask meme things #taylor swift prompt fics #birdhapley #this might get cleaned up and end up on AO3 later WHO KNOWS #throw another one under the 'wrote it in one sitting in a fugue state' column #my fic

[firstelevens]

last line challenge

tagged by @ankahikoibaat

rules: in a new post, share the last line you wrote and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you feel like).

It never occurred to him that he could start a feud with Captain America, because Cap is a literal superhero who rubs elbows with kings and gods, and Bucky is a third grade teacher whose most exciting achievement this month was getting glitter off of his favorite leather jacket.

Look. I know I already have a teachers AU, but in THIS teacher AU, only one of them is a teacher and the other is Captain America so technically I've done something new.

no-pressure tagging @sesamestreep @philtstone @sambambucky @abarbaricyalp

#i will point out that in the teachers AU they are high school teachers so THATS DIFFERENT #zainab does ask meme things #thanks for the tag Ara! #I wrote 500 words of this and immediately stalled out so now I'm just poking at it and changing lines here and there until it gets going

[firstelevens]

sambucky (bake off AU mayhaps?? 👀) + “bloom” 🪷

“Okay, but why did bodyslamming the dough seem like a good idea?”

Sam scowls at the phone. “I didn’t bodyslam the dough, Bucky. I just applied extra pressure so it would roll out.”

“You threw your entire body weight behind that rolling pin and fucked up your neck and shoulder, Sam; I think that’s a little more than extra pressure.”

“I had to get five dozen danishes shaped, what was I supposed to do?”

“You could have waited literally any amount of time for the dough to warm up.”

There’s no video on the call, but Sam can perfectly picture the look on Bucky’s face anyway, frustration mingled with fondness, and he would call the feeling that blooms in his chest homesickness if he wasn’t already smack in the middle of Delacroix.

“Put Alpine on,” he says, instead of I miss you or thank you for worrying about me. “She’s much more sympathetic than you are.”

“Can’t,” says Bucky. “She’s at my parents’ place.”

“And where are you, exactly? You left her all alone?”

Bucky snorts. “I dropped her off a while ago. She’s busy hanging out with my parents while they set up for the party; I just needed to make a quick stop.”

That, at least, explains why Sam thought he heard a GPS earlier in the call. The neighborhood that Bucky’s parents live in might as well be a labyrinth, and for all George and Winnie’s well-intentioned directions, one visit was enough to put Sam firmly on Bucky’s side of the ‘this is why no one should live in New Jersey’ debate. 

(Not that Bucky ever needs to know that. During his last visit to the city, Sam had shamelessly baited Bucky by praising a bagel spot in New Brunswick, and the resulting angry makeout session had absolutely been worth listening to Bucky’s rant about the superiority of New York tap water.)

Sam doesn’t realize that he’s gone silent until Bucky’s voice breaks through his thoughts. “I didn’t interrupt you setting up at the truck, did I? Tell me you’re not there right now.”

“You’re worse than my Mama, you know that?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” says Bucky, and it’s actually stupid, the way a corny line like that makes Sam’s heart stutter.

“I’m not at the truck,” says Sam. “Freddie said he could cover the lunch rush, and Naya has practice after school today, so we’ll just close things up early.”

“Sorry, sweetheart. I know you were looking forward to seeing everyone before tonight.”

He sighs. “It’s fine; I’m just glad we didn’t have to shut down completely. I should’ve been more careful.”

“You think I could have that last thing in writing? Get it notarized, maybe?”

It’s very obviously a ploy to make Sam laugh, but it works anyway. “Shut up, Barnes. I’m always careful.”

“Oh, did you get rid of Redwing and just forget to tell me? That tiny little plane that you flew during a storm the other day, because you live to stress me out?”

“I live for other things; raising your heart rate is just a bonus.”

Bucky snorts. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told,” says Sam. He starts to ask something else, but cuts himself off as the doorbell rings.

“Sam Wilson,” Bucky says, faux-scandalized, “did you just call me to kill time while you were waiting for company to arrive?”

“Not this time,” says Sam, as he pushes away from his desk. “I’m not even expecting anyone; Sarah and Freddie already took the truck.”

“Maybe they forgot something.”

“I think I’d have noticed eight batches of croissants lying around.”

“Maybe they just really wanted to see you again.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s that one,” laughs Sam. “Hang on a second, let me just see who it is.”

He’s still got the phone pressed to his ear as he pulls the door open, which is maybe why he’s so confused to find his boyfriend standing on his porch and not a thousand miles away in New Jersey.

“Like I said,” Bucky says, grinning crookedly at Sam, “I just wanted to see you again.”

#local woman fought like ten pounds of dough today and this is how she's chosen to cope #'hey zainab did YOU mess up your shoulder today bodyslamming dough that was too cold to roll out?' shhhh mind your business #sambucky #the gbbo au #in case you were wondering this is contemporaneous with chapter 15 of the OG fic #sesamestreep #zainab does ask meme things #my fic