I am pleased by people messaging me telling me that after adding a carb or protein to their snacks or meals they feel more satisfied all day. Yes, my plan is working. People are getting through their days with less hangry.
You fell through time by accident — and now you're stuck in 1943, watching Bucky Barnes charm every woman in the room but you. So you start to wonder: did the man you left behind ever really want you, or just keep what was convenient? He's about to answer that. He just doesn't know it yet.
◌⃘ Pairing: 1940s!Bucky Barnes x nurse!Reader and present!Bucky Barnes x scientist!reader
◌⃘ Word count: 2.5K
◌⃘ Warnings: angst, because I don't feel well and this is how my brain works when I'm sick.
The small dance hall in Brooklyn smelled of cigarette smoke and cheap perfume, and you had been standing against the back wall for the better part of an hour, watching the man you loved fall in love with everyone but you.
Not that he knew you. That was the cruel logic of it all. To Sergeant James Barnes, you were nobody. Nothing but a nurse he'd been introduced to twice, and forgotten both times. A face in a crowd of pretty faces, but by no means the prettiest.
You had stopped being able to feel your own face somewhere around the third song, no longer pretending to smile.
"You gonna dance, or you gonna be a wallflower all night?"
You turned. One of the girls— Doris, or maybe it it was Lilian, you weren't paying attention— was smiling at you with the social grace that women in this time seemed to possess effortlessly. They belonged in a way you never would. You gave her something that was probably a smile.
"I'm alright watching."
"Watching him, you mean." She followed your gaze to where Bucky stood in his dress uniform, left arm braced against a pillar as he leaned down to murmur something into the ear of a redhead who laughed like he'd hung the moon. "Half the room's watching him. Don't feel bad, sweets. He's real generous with the old charm."
Generous! You laughed to yourself, that was certainly one word for it.
You'd been in 1943 for eleven days. Eleven days since the machine in your lab had done whatever it was that it did. There had been a surge of power, a blinding flash of light and the smell of ozone that still hadn't left your nostrils. You had woken up staring at a strange sky, in an alley between two buildings you didn't recognize.
Eleven days later, you had talked your way into a nursing post with the competence that only came with training from a program that wouldn't exist for another sixty years.
The first time you had seen him, you hadn't been able to move. You almost walked past without a backward glance. The thing that had gotten your attention wasn't how he looked, it was his voice. It hadn't changed. What had changed was how freely he laughed
It was all you could think of as you lay on a narrow rented bed and stared up at the ceiling, thinking: He's here. He's alive and whole and here, and he has no idea who I am.
You'd thought seeing this version of him would be a comfort.
You'd been so stupid.
So there you were, contemplating your existence, a woman out of your own time. And you realized that the thing nobody told you about time travel was that it was mostly waiting.
You had managed to track down a physicist— a nervous, but brilliant scientist who was well ahead of his time and happened to work for Stark Industries and liked to carry out experiments in his basement.
When you'd described the machine, he had gone very pale and very quiet and then become very interested. He offered to help you. He thought it would take weeks. He speculated a great many things, and every one of them required you to stay close to the war effort, close to the base, close— by fate or by accident— to Bucky-freaking-Barnes.
You should have quit, but you needed the money and a place to stay. So you saw him. Constantly. At the mess, in the corridors, at these godforsaken dances the other nurses dragged you to. And every time, the same knife went in.
Because Bucky Barnes flirted with everyone.
You watched him do it like a case study you had a vested interest in. I'm a way, you did.
He flirted with Lilian and Doris and Elizabeth, with Marian and Margaret and even Sandy. He flirted with the girl who sold cigarettes and the middle-aged woman who ran your boarding house who flushed like a school girl every time he tipped his cap.
He flirted with the same energy that other mean breathed— unconsciously, effortlessly and with enthusiasm. With the whole world except you.
With you he was polite. God, the politeness was utterly devastating. Every 'ma'am.' Every 'miss.' Every nod.
Once— and only once— he caught you looking at him for too long across the mess hall and you had noticed a flicker on his face. It wasn't interest, no you knew his expressions well enough, it was something closer to confusion. Almost as though he couldn't quite figure out why this particular nurse kept staring at him like she was drowning.
You'd looked away so fast you'd spilled your coffee.
So here's the thing you could quite wrap your head around. It was the splinter which kept digging it's way deeper. He was still Bucky. Before the fall. Before seventy years of ice and torture. Before his free will had been ripped away. It was still him. The same kind man you loved.
And his man had looked at you and felt nothing.
"You look like you're thinking too hard," Lillian said. "Never a good idea at a dance."
"Sorry." You forced a smile and made yourself relax. "Long shift," you lied with a shrug.
She patted your arm sympathetically and drifted off in the direction of a corporal who had been eyeing her from across the hall. And then you were alone. Again. Listening to Bucky laughing at something across the room, his eyes crinkled and nose scrunched. You had to close your eyes.
In the present, you told yourself, he loves you.
But did he?
This thought was the poison of the past, the reason the past eleven days had hollowed you out and given you reason to doubt. Because you'd met your Bucky broken. You'd met him after— after the Soldier, after the torture, after the long slow work he had done to put himself back together, with therapy and effort and the kind of hard-won stillness that made his rare smiles feel earned. Your Bucky was quiet. He was careful. He loved you the way a man loves the shore after a shipwreck— grateful, fierce, like something he'd been afraid to hope for.
When you thought back, this stillness had always felt like the depth in your relationship. That his quiet devotion was the shape of a man who had survived far too much to be careless with his heart. That when he reached for you in the dark, when he said your name with reverence, when he told you that he loved you, it was the truest thing in him.
Only now you'd seen the before.
Now you'd seen who he was when the world hadn't broken him yet.
And that man— that carefree, radiant, flirtatious man— he wouldn't have looked at you twice. That man had a type, and you were watching him charm her across the dance floor right now, and it most decidedly wasn't you. It was never you.
So what did that make what you had back home?
It was the ugly thought. The one that had been circling your brain in different iterations for the last eleven days.
He's with you because you were there.
Because you'd been kind to him at the worst point of his life.
Because you were willing, and steady, and you'd stayed when staying was hard.
Because a drowning man doesn't check whether the hand pulling him up is the one he'd have chosen.
He grabs what's offered.
You were what was offered. Convenient. Present. Undemanding.
Not chosen. Settled.
You believed it completely, while standing in that dance hall. It sank deep into your bones, like the weight of something you'd always half-known and finally let yourself see.
"You're that nurse."
You startled so badly at his voice that you knocked your purse off the table. Bucky was standing in front of you— right in front of you, close enough that you could smell the pomade and the wool of his uniform. And he was looking at you with that faint, puzzled crease between his brows. He bent down and retrieved your purse without a second thought.
"I— yeah. Sorry. Yes. I'm a nurse."
Brilliant. Very cool. Totally nailed that response. You mentally face palmed yourself.
"You keep looking at me." He said it plainly, without judgement. "All week. At the mess, and now here." He paused, studying your face. "Do I know you? From somewhere? I feel like I oughta, and it's drivin' me half crazy tryna figure it out."
You don't know me yet, was the thought didn't say. You won't know me for another eighty years.
"No," you managed in a flat tone. "You don't know me."
He studied you. And for one horrible, hopeful second you let yourself imagine that something would spark between you. That he would recognize something buried deep inside himself, the one who would one day become the man you loved. That he'd feel it, the way you felt it. The impossible gravity that existed between you.
He didn't. You watched him not feel it. He just gave you a small, courteous, sorry-can't-place-you smile and the last shred of hope shattered in it chest.
"Well," he said. "You alright? You look a little—" he gestured vaguely at all of you, "—pale. Rough night on the ward?"
You laughed dismally. "Something like that."
"You want some air? You look like you want some air."
And there it was. Not attraction. Kindness. The reflexive decency of a good man toward a woman who looked unwell. He'd have offered the same to Doris or Evelyn, to the redhead or the blonde, to anyone really. You knew it, and you took it anyway, because you were weak and you loved him and this was the closest he'd stood to you in eleven days.
Outside, the night was cold and wet and smelled of the harbor. Bucky lit a cigarette, offered you one, seemed unsurprised when you shook your head. For a while neither of you said anything.
"You got somebody?" he asked finally, and your heart lurched dangerously. "Back home, I mean. You got that look. Like half of you is somewhere else."
You laughed and it came out wrecked.
"Yeah," you said. "I've got somebody."
"He treat you right?"
He loves me like a man loves the thing that saved him, you thought. And I don't know anymore if that's the same as loving me for me.
"I don't know," you said honestly. "I used to think so. Now I'm not sure he'd have picked me. If things had been different. If he'd had… options. I think maybe I was just… the one who was there."
Bucky was quiet a moment. When you looked at him he was frowning— not the usual puzzled frown, it was something more thoughtful.
"That's a helluva thing to carry," he said. "You wanna know what I think?"
He looked at you, barely waiting for you to answer before he continued.
"I flirt with every dame in that room. You've seen me, don't pretend you haven't." He gave you a rueful half-smile. "It's easy. Don't cost me a thing. You smile, they smile, everybody has a nice night, nobody gets hurt. It's—" he searched for the right word, "—it's cheap. You understand? It's the cheapest thing I got."
You stared at him.
"You know what's not cheap?" he went on, looking out into the night. "The stuff that costs you something— and that's not the girl you charm across a dance hall. That's the one you'd still want around when there's nothing charming left in you. When you're scared, or sick, or done things you can't take back."
He exhaled smoke. "A fella who's had it easy, he'll flirt with anybody. Don't mean anything. But a fella who's been through the wringer, and he still reaches for one particular person—" he shrugged, "—seems to me that's the only kind that counts. The rest's just… noise."
You couldn't breathe.
He didn't know how deeply what he'd said had resonated with you. He couldn't have. He was just a kind man being kind to a sad woman outside a dance hall, offering the accidental wisdom of someone who'd one day live every word of it. But he'd reached across eighty years and removed the splinter from your heart.
A fella who's been through the wringer, and he still reaches for one particular person.
That was your Bucky. Not a drowning man grabbing for the nearest hand. A man who had been through the absolute worst the world could do. A man who had every reason to be closed and cold and careful with the little warmth he had left. And instead who spent it, deliberately, expensively, on you.
Not because you were convenient. Because when everything cheap had been burned out of him, you were what remained. You were the thing that counted.
The flirtation you'd been grieving wasn't the love you knew. It never had been. It was the noise. And your Bucky had gone silent with everyone else in the world and still turned, in the dark, toward you.
"Thank you," you whispered.
Bucky looked faintly bewildered. "For what? I didn't do anything."
"You'd be surprised," you said, tears slipping down your cheeks before laughing at the way he was hastily patting his pockets for a handkerchief with the flustered gallantry of a man way out of his depth
And for the first time in eleven days the ache in your chest had somewhere to go.
The scientist sent for you nine days later. You had pulled yourself away from the pub, one last glance at the Sergeant before you scurried away under the cover of darkness.
The machine hummed and the basement reeked of ozone. Suddenly your heart was pounding and you were looking back at the strange world you were leaving. At the war that hadn't broken him fully yet. At the still charming boy who would become, through unspeakable years, the quiet man who loved you.
I'm coming home baby, you told him, across the space-time continuum. I finally understand what I'm coming home to.
With that vow, you stepped into the light.
When you opened your eyes it was day and you were back in your lab, surrounded by your things and there— there was already someone crossing the room toward you at a dead run. Someone with a metal arm and a face raw with grief and terror that lasted twenty days. Someone who caught you and held you like the shore holds the shipwreck.
"You're back," Bucky said into your hair, over and over, wrecked and reaching only for you. "You're back, you're back, you're back."
"I'm back," you said. "I know exactly where I am."
heard someone say "who even owns a rolling pin anymore" and my brain froze trying to process it. what does that mean. are u implying rolling pins are outdated technology? did we come up with a shiny new 21st century method of flattening dough of which i remain uninformed? is there now an app on the app store people are using instead??? im losing my mind "who even owns a rolling pin" people who BAKE
in the 2020s people don't own rolling pins they subscribe to Breadr+ to rent an exciting new model every month! explore a wide range of colors, sizes, weights, grips, and materials to find the model that fits YOUR dream lifestye!!!!!*
*subscription required, Breadr+ rolling pins not currently available for purchase
one time I went over to a friend's house and their housemate was making paper in the living room, and we saw this big tub full of water they were using to dissolve old scrap paper into a slurry, and everyone was immediately like "oh, you need scrap paper?" and started turning out their jacket pockets and producing expired coupons and bus tickets and crumpled receipts and old shopping lists and whatever else they'd been carrying round with them for no good reason, and passing it all to the paper-making housemate to make sure it was suitable before it got torn up and dropped into the tub, while people took turns stirring the slurry with a big wooden stick. it was strangely ritualistic, like presenting an offering to some kind of temple elder for inspection before placing it in a watery shrine to be devoured and reformed. pulp for the pulp god.
Also, please do not listen to how people talk about cover letters on this site. Cover letters are important, and in many industries you can be damn sure they'll be read. And no, they're not 'fanfic about working in your office', or just re-stating the resume contents in a fancier guise. If you treat them like that, then of course they're not doing much for you. That makes you sound like a syncophantic windbag, and it's not doing anything else to help.
I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.
The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.
This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.
And the other mistake? Everyone writes cover letters that are too long. One page is fine. Two is the absolute maximum, and that's if you have a lot of specific things to say. It's a waste of your time and theirs to pad it out with fluff. Of my two most recent successful cover letters (i.e. jobs for which I was interviewed) one was 390 words and the other was 550. That's the length of this post. How long did it take me to write this post? About 15 minutes to write, 5 to proof and edit. That's how long you should be spending on a cover letter, maximum.
I'm gonna say it, I do think that even the laziest person imaginable should have a roof over their head, food in their stomach, and access to healthcare
Unfettered love @erelierraceala - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
