Apr. 30th, 2021 at 7:25 PM
OPEN POST ▪ PIC PROMPTS ✔ ▪ BODY HEAT/SNOWED IN ✔ ▪
HURT/COMFORT ✔ ▪ WORD ASSOCIATION ✔ ▪ SMUT ✔ ▪
TEXTING ✔ ▪
RANDOM STARTERS ✔ ▪
BLUE SHIRT APPRECIATION ✔
BUCKETHEAD.
March 2023
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did someone say trash?
Heard trash, came runnin
Something something clever
Linking the smut option
jk here's a real one
Edited 2021-05-27 03:56 pm (UTC)
i'm oscar the grouch rn: https://bit.ly/3i8mRZR
he really should've known better.
so, when she invites him over to not sleep on the floor, bucky sleeps on her couch. it's nice and comfortable—definitely better than his, which he doesn't sleep on at all—and perfect for sleeping. it happens again and again—molly, surprisingly, doesn't know what "no" means—and so he sleeps over, first on the couch before he graduates to the bed. he always ensures to stay on her left so that she gets his right side, his metal arm purposefully distanced for them both.
this is the price he knows he has to pay for being her friend, the whole caring thing. bucky's not exactly used to it. no one ever looked after him back when he was younger and without the serum as that had always been his job. he's still trying to figure it out—how to accept it and how to make sure that's not all he does.
so, that's where he finds himself tonight, sitting up shirtless against the pillows on his side of the bed. his dog tags sit haphazardly against his chest. he's thrown his metal arm above his head and rests his right arm around her, absently tapping his fingers against her shoulder. while he respects it whenever she wants to read, he does tend to find that as his prime time to ask a thousand questions that hardly ever relate to one another. ]
Have you ever had a dead body move?
[ there's a few reasons why bucky asks morbid questions when in bed: 1) he wants a believable reason for why he hasn't slept if she asks and 2) he's genuinely curious. ]
On nom nom nom
BUT THAT WAS THEN.
Leaving London had meant a lot of changes - that whole people disappearing and re-appearing 5 years later thing was a wake up call for a LOT of people. Now she had a one-bedroom flat ("apartment" was so damn wordy), two beloved cats, a well-worn sofa, and closet chock full of boxes that she still hasn't properly unpacked.
Now, while there may be some health benefits to sleeping on the floor, she doesn't think it's good for Bucky in the long run. Super-health or not, he needs to TRY and take care of himself. Or she will.
They were oddly similar in that regard; so much of their pasts involve supporting and looking after others, there's not a whole lot of being on the receiving end of that.So she gets a little insistent over time with him - stay over, get a good sleep, I'll make you breakfast. Meet my four-legged fur children.
After several stays on the couch, she offered for him to take her bed - "if the couch is good for you it's good for me". They'd maybe had a debate about it which ended up in the sharing situation. There was plenty of space, though maybe that was because she still had several boxes tucked away in the closet that hadn't been unpacked after moving in, and that was at least six months ago.
Plus, she doesn't want the cats disturbing his sleep. Toby's a bit on the older side now, and she still thinks of him like her baby but he can be a prat. Melon is technically the actual baby, having been adopted after she came to the states. Molly doesn't know why she keeps surrounding herself with boys, but she wants them all to get along. And she doesn't want them treating Bucky like a scratching post.
Truthfully, she loves his company. She hadn't realized quite how much she'd missed sharing space with someone until now. He's unlike any friend she's ever had before, but not because of when he was born or what his day job is. It's just because he's Bucky. Prickly and grumpy-faced on the outside, but rather sweet and cuddly on the inside. She thinks he's a little bit like a hedgehog in that regard. It's nice to just exist with someone - no outside pressures. And that's coming from a woman who used to try and fill every awkward silence.
Tonight's silence is broken when he asks one of his trademark Bucky at Bedtime questions. She chuckles, closing the book and takes off her reading glasses. She's been having a tough time getting through this passage anyway.]
Suppose that depends on your definition of 'move'. Like, sit up and wave, no. But even hours after death, the systems inside are still shutting down, so there's absolutely muscle movements that occur. So yes.
[She makes sure her reading things are off on her bedside table, then re-settles against him, resting her hand on his chest.]
You can still digest and expel waste after expiration, and then there's, you know, the whole erection thing. But everybody knows that one.
[She idly touches his dog tags, fingertips tracing the edges. She looks up at him, thoughtful.]
...Hey. Can I ask you a question for once? Er, I mean, I know I ask plenty of questions all the time, but...
Well, you ask me lots of things that no one ever asks, and you're not judgy about any of it, and I like that. And sometimes there are things I'd like to ask you, but...I worry about stepping into a sensitive subject.
[He has genuine curiosity about the things that are important to her. She wants to do the same for him.]
Edited (Tweaks 5ever) 2021-06-02 10:55 pm (UTC)
bucky hums, purposefully prolonging it and making a bit of an audible show of it. molly always seems a little impatient, so he likes to lean on being a bit of an icicle, requiring some thawing before he actually speaks. even bucky barnes, the immovable and sometimes rather grumpy old man, can have a sense of humour at times. ]
Okay.
[ he keeps his tone even, not wanting to sound like he's a little worried. most of the time, there's nothing to worry about.
despite that, little anxious butterflies set free inside of his chest. he can't help it. bucky's still getting to know how people move, what they ask, what they don't ask. it's like he's still locked in some sort of ice.
he scrunches up his face and offers playfully, ] Although, if it involves taking Toby and Melon to my place, they've already packed their bags.
[ who knew bucky was a cat person? ]
She's a little bit over that. She is a person with a life outside of Sherlock Holmes. While there may always be a corner of her heart for him, he does not have any claim over the whole. They are friends, and she does check in from time to time. He may share an interesting case, but usually what she gloms into are the details of home life, like Mrs. Hudson's hip pain or latest squabbles with his brother.
If anything (god forbid) happens to John Watson, the two of them do have a shared responsibility to look after Rosie. But Molly Hooper's life is here now in the states - Sherlock's tolerating the new mortician at Barts (or at least lying to Molly out of polite respect for her decisiom to leave), she FaceTimes Rosie every weekend (John, Sherlock, or Mrs. Hudson are usually about as well, but it's Rosie's time), Greg calls once a month if he can manage, and her friend Meena is hoping to visit in the summer.
Molly's less content these days to wait for things to happen to her. Like kinetic energy on an object, she exerts a bit more force these days and she's less prone to tolerating bullshit. Bucky's certainly noticed it enough to start giving her a hard time. Sometimes she thinks he kind of likes it when she gets a little bossy. Maybe someday she'll call him on it. For now, she laughs and nudges his side]
Oho, really? Did they tell you that? Little scamps. Next they'll be loving up on you and turn your arm into a scratching post. And I don't necessarily mean your left one.
[More often than not, she stuck to 'left' and 'right' as identifiers. Somehow she thought that was more polite; she hoped it came off that way.]
Okay. Okay! Well, shit, I didn't think you were gonna be this cool this fast, now I'm nervous.
[She tilts her head back for a moment against his right arm to think, but all she really does is glimpse his face and his other arm in her peripheral. His unique arm is one of the things she has questions about. If she only gets one shot at this....
NOPE she's still a tad chicken. She settles for asking a related question to what she's really curious about, tentatively resting her head against his right shoulder as she asks.]
The gold and black on your arm - does the, er, metal naturally look like that, or was that a design choice?
( YOU HAD TO LEAVE TO START YOUR LIFE OVER )
Despite believing that both Black Widows would know how to manoeuvre around a spider's web, he knew that the purpose of a web was to not only look pretty but to be sticky enough to capture insects. In this case, the Widow network would try and catch its spiders, too. Dreykov was a figure Bucky easily understood—he wanted power, and he would have done anything to ensure that he maintained that power. The Widow network would have been intricately mapped out and programmed just like his own brainwashing.
With his duffle bag sitting prettily in the centre of the kitchen table, Bucky closed his eyes and sighed, and did his best to ignore Alexei's big booming voice as he spun a tale of how he had gone undercover in a similar situation and had easily beaten out Captain America as Russia's best spy. Bucky knew it was bullshit. The timestamps didn't ever add up. After Natasha had gently told him to simply let it go and let the old man reminisce in a way that made him feel big and important and useful, he did. Or, at least, he did his best.
It made him feel a little more comfortable with the task that they were undertaking. If Bucky was annoyed, he wasn't nervous. He hadn't pretended to be anyone else in a… long, long time. He could barely remember when he had been anyone but the Winter Soldier, and now he was here, ready to play husband to Natasha in order to brush shoulders with incredibly stuck up rich people positioned in too powerful positions. If they could integrate themselves within that elite, they could get closer to the heart of the Widow network in the United States. One branch of spider webs down.
Once he heard Alexei pick himself up from the couch and wander after a disgruntled Yelena to the backyard to tend to the pigs, Bucky stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room. And there sat his wife… or fake wife. For someone who was so straight-laced, it was difficult for him to wrap his head around the fact he needed to tap into his more subtle side. He liked being sharp and brash. It made him feel as though he truly did own himself.
Leaning against the wall close to where Natasha sat, he crossed his arms and shook his head incredulously. "You're really going to need to tell the big guy to stop talking shit about Steve before I punch him with my left hand." It would've sounded more like an exasperated threat if the corners of his lips weren't turned upward.
Of course that had all fallen apart because of Red Room and the machinations of their political espionage as they always would. She and Yelena were doomed to fall into the hands of the monsters who'd haunted her dreams as far back as she could remember. The monsters she'd vowed to destroy one day and thought she had. She'd thought wrong.
As bad as Hydra, the slippery cells just popped up again from one cover agency to another and using more and more vile methods of control and domination to make people, girls, their unwilling servants. It didn't seem to matter how many she took down there was always going to be more, the spider laid millions of eggs and it was going to take time to eradicate them all.
So she was grateful for the help she was being offered by others; Alexi, Yelena, Melina and surprisingly by the man she'd thought once might kill her as a rival. His vitriol now though seemed reserved for Shostakov and she had to chuckle. Natasha tipped back a shot of vodka and poured a second before she turned to face him, looking quite oddly demure in her 'casual attire' of jeans and a white t-shirt, hair back in a pony tail as though she was just some ordinary house wife. The part she'd be playing along side him. "Oh he'd love that way too much."
She smirked and downed her second shot, gesturing with the empty glass while she swallowed. "You know hell specifically tells those stories to get a rise out of you right? He's spoiling for a good fight and he thinks your the only one who can give it to him."
He sighed, shaking his head. While he thought of sharing another quip about Alexei—and loudly, too, just in case he was listening in—he didn't particularly want to talk too much about him.
"You really think this is going to work?"
Bucky couldn't help but have a glass half empty kind of view these days. Natasha looked so calm and unmoved. A part of him was jealous of how easily she made things look.
Was Barnes a friend now? It was hard to tell with him, he'd tried to kill her at one point but so had every other person in the house so she couldn't very well hold that against him. So she had to assume they were something. They weren't enemies and they surely had aligned purposes. They both knew how it felt to be used against their will as a puppet for someone else and she wanted to spare others that pain.
Natasha turned and poured herself another shot, she poured a twin and when she turned back she stood and handed the other to him. She took up a lean on the wall next to him. She raised her glass and looked at it. "I think it can, but you really need to loosen up. Do you come from the planet that fun forgot?"
She clinked her shot to his and raised it to her lips ready to toss it back when he did his own.
Although, it was surely very, very easy to be fun with alcohol when he wasn't affected by it.
Bucky remained standing, looking to a clear space against the wall. Despite Natasha's confidence, he didn't quite feel it. This was out of his element. Even if Bucky was far from who the Soldier was, that was all he knew. It was all his muscles could recall from memory.
"I'm not wearing pants that end at the ankle," he said before looking at her, the corner of his lip curving upward. "I don't want to be the fashion disaster that you usually are." See? He could be fun…
[ wow, the offence. he scrunches up his face in disbelief. ]
Yes!
Grumpy.
Annoying.
[ das u ]
Sam?
[ well... that just kind of makes him feel a bit bad now. ]
I'm sure you'll get the honour. [ he says it in a super convincing way that isn't entirely convincing at all. (this is why sam and steve do the talking, not him.) ] Eventually.
[ nailed it. ]
[ he expresses his surprise with a lift of his brows. being around people who are dead (usually those who are, what he'd call, "ghosts") is starting to become the norm for bucky. he's the biggest poltergeist of them all. ]
You got a grave, too? I've got a fancy tombstone I'm not too sure how to feel about. [ he lifts a shoulder as he states dryly, ] They could've said a lot more about me. There's a lot of space.
[ "HERE LIKES JAMES BARNES. GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN." it's not a great use of the negative space if you ask bucky barnes, the basic photoshopper. ]
It's small, with just my name and the years. I don't think my mom and brothers could afford much else.
I did hear that I got a memorial page in the yearbook though, which was nice, I guess? I've never actually seen it.
[ Maybe she should have a look in the township library to look it up. ]
[ sorry, my dude. this is going to get depressing. ]
Forgotten.
[ bucky barnes has 99 problems and all of them are regrets. that's why he says rather dryly, ]
Always.
[She'd rather ask him flat out, but she isn't sure he'd share. But she is here, listening.]
Samuel's not the one who scares me.
I have no idea what that means.
I swear your kids speak a whole other language to me on purpose.
They do, so did you when you were their age. I think it's cute, on both sides.