shoestringheart

the tumblr equivalent of my AO3 page (shoestringheart) because IRL people found my shoestringheart tumblr and i'm too embarrassed to share wincest and stucky with them. i take requests!

[shoestringheartfic-blog]

a last letter to you wherever you are

The good news, Baze thinks, the good news is that he won’t have to go on living without Chirrut. This is an unthinkable thing; to go on living without Chirrut would be like living without eyelids. Not a problem for Chirrut (he doesn’t need his eyelids, or his eyes, or Baze), but a problem for Baze who lost his faith in the Force, and lost his faith in himself and lost his faith in everything but Chirrut. A life, as Chirrut would say, without faith is a terrible thing. Hardly a life at all. So, for Baze: A life without Chirrut is a terrible thing. He knows. He knows it in his bones.

The seven minutes between Chirrut’s death I am one with the Force and the Force is with me and Baze dying are the longest in Baze’s life; a faithless eternity stretched out in front of him. This is what drives him forward; this is what cushions his fall.

The first time Baze met Chirrut they were very young and very foolish and Baze took one look at Chirrut’s useless eyes and felt skepticism build deep within him, in the pit of his belly. Do you use the Force to see, he asks Chirrut, which is rude, but Baze does not bother with manners most of the time and Chirrut seems to understand this, or at least not to mind this because he only smiles and says I cannot see, but I use the Force to Know. Baze supposes this is better than seeing.

When he came to the temple, when he came to be a Guardian of the Whills, he knew with every fiber of his being that the Force was real and alive and present in the universe; Baze felt the Force filling him up, like water, like sand, like Life. Once, he told Chirrut. He said I feel the Force filling me up and Chirrut smiled and said I feel it too and Baze said you feel the Force like water in you? and Chirrut said I feel it in you, and that is how I know it is in me. This does not make sense. Baze does not say that, he says Do you feel the Force in you? and Chirrut had smiled and said do you, and Baze said I’m not sure, but it was a lie and Chirrut knew that it was a lie. The truth is that Baze feels the Force roaring through Chirrut; if it fills Baze up like water, it fills Chirrut up like a waterfall. Chirrut laughs and says you are not such a good liar, my friend, and Baze says this is what makes me a better Guardian than you and Chirrut laughs again and leans in to kiss him.

There’s this place inside Baze, this place Chirrut lives, a place Baze can protect him, keep him safe, a place Baze has built for Chirrut to stay, a place Baze has built with his prayers. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. Before the temple is destroyed, Baze puts Chirrut’s hand on his chest, just under his heart, the place he has built for Chirrut to live and says Can you feel this? and Chirrut says yes, and then Chirrut says thank you and then Chirrut presses his face against the place Baze has built for him and says we are one with the Force and the Force is with us and Baze thinks about the way prayers linger in your throat, in the curve of your mouth, the way prayers float around just under your ribcage, in the place he has built for Chirrut.

Every time they make love, they whisper prayers to each other. You are a good man, Chirrut says. No I am a strong man, Baze says, because there is a difference. Chirrut is the good man; Baze is the strong man. Can you not be both? Chirrut asks and Baze thinks and says Yes, but I am not—because Chirrut is good and strong. Chirrut is the best kind of man there is, Baze thinks. You have Faith in the Force, but no Faith in yourself, Chirrut says and Baze says I have Faith in you and the Force and that is enough. Then Chirrut takes Baze’s cock in his hand and slides his fingers up the shaft and says You are a good man and a strong man, Baze and Baze comes and comes and comes. I love you, Chirrut says, after Baze has taken Chirrut’s cock in his mouth and made him pray and swear and come. You love my mouth, Baze says, and laughs and Chirrut laughs too and says Yes and then Chirrut says Look at the sky, Baze, look at the stars, the moons and Baze says Do you Know them, because Chirrut cannot see but he uses the Force to Know and Chirrut says no but I Know you and that is better.

When the temple falls, Baze feels the Force drain out of him like water; a great wave of the Force, leaving him all at once, leaving him breathless. He falls to his knees and Chirrut says I am one with the Force and the Force is with me, like everything they’ve built hasn’t just gone up in dust. Baze says You cannot see this, you cannot Know this and Chirrut says the Force is beyond Knowing and Baze says you stupid old fool and Chirrut only smiles and puts his hand just under Baze’s heart, over the place Baze has built for him and says I am one with the Force and the Force is with us and then he falls to his knees in front of Baze and says we will live in the place you have built and Baze says it is only big enough for you and Chirrut says then I will make a place for you in me, I will build it with my prayers.

Chirrut dragged him along on this suicide mission and he says we are going to die and Chirrut says it’s not so terrible, to die among friends. Baze disagrees, but he doesn’t say anything and Chirrut presses his cheek to the place under Baze’s heart, the place Baze built for him and says a life without Faith is a terrible thing and Baze says I have Faith in you, which is all Baze needs. Chirrut and the places they have built for each other—these are all they need.

This is what Baze did not realize: there are quiet moments in a battle, pockets of space and silence. Tiny prayers. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. it is during one of these small prayers that Baze leans in to rest his cheek on the place Chirrut has built for him. Chirrut pets his hair, as though Baze is very small. In the wake of this battle, he feels very small. Someday I will build you a place to match the one I carry with me, Baze says and Chirrut hums, so deep Baze feels it more than hears it and he says the place you have built is all that I need and Baze kisses the place just over Chirrut’s heart and says When this is over, I will build you a temple and Chirrut says I will live there with you. And Baze already knows they will not survive this; that the weapon that destroyed Jedha City will come, and will destroy this place, too; it will destroy the places they carry inside of themselves. Baze is afraid and he presses his forehead to Chirrut’s sternum and says I am afraid and Chirrut nods. Baze feels this, too. We are one with the Force and the Force is with us, he says and Baze shakes his head. I do not need the Force when I have you, he says, and he feels Chirrut’s smile. You have the Force when you have me, he says.

The seven minutes without Chirrut are an eternity; as Chirrut said, a life without Faith is a terrible thing.

The Force is with me, Baze says, and he turns his eyes to the sky. He hears Chirrut in the place Baze built for him say can you Feel the stars and Baze says I am one with the Force. Baze falls. He feels the place he built for Chirrut crack and crumble.

The Force is with me, Baze says. I am one with the Force.

[shoestringheartfic-blog]

wondrous; chapter one

find this on ao3

chapter one: hey asshole

“You can’t just sit here and die.” The statement is made in exasperation; a side effect of dealing with him, he was sure, of sitting here and watching him die.

“Don’t really have the energy for much else, Peg. Sorry.” Only he’s not really sorry (or at least not really sorry about not having the energy to do more than sit here and die) and Peggy knows it. Probably.

Peggy mutters something about Dr. Erskine hearing about this before she walks off, no doubt to fetch his latest round of medication which he, coincidentally, didn’t have the energy for, either. He doubted Peggy would be so willing to let that one slide, though.

He’s right—Peggy lines his pills up like little soldiers and he swallows them, painfully, one by one. With applesauce. It was yogurt, and then pudding, but they switched to applesauce because dairy started doing Weird and Bad things to Steve’s digestive tract. Weird and Bad things like explosive diarrhea which, actually, doesn’t get any less embarrassing after the fifth time you’ve shit your pants.

There are a lot of things that happen now that, two years ago, would have mortified Steve. Look, he’s always been a sick kid. That was just the way his life went. But it was just severe asthma that complicated itself a million times over until one day it wasn’t. One of the fancy pants treatments they tried planted cancer in his lung tissue and by the time they found it…

So, now, here he was: twenty-three and dying of lung cancer, which was, like, the shittiest of the shitty lots in life. But it wasn’t like Steve minded the whole “dying young” thing—rather, he minded the whole “it’s taking forever to die” thing. Because two years ago, Dr. Erskine had said things like “six months max” but then Steve had lived seven, and then eight, and then eighteen months past his projected date of death.

Each extra day is a gift, Peggy had said in the beginning. Steve got so tired of hearing her say it, he finally asked her to stop and now she didn’t say it anymore, but Steve could tell she was thinking it. Since Steve had now lived eighteen months past his projected date of death, Peggy seemed to think that the dying young part of his life had been put on hold. Steve wasn’t entirely inclined to agree with her, but he didn’t really have the energy to argue about it. So what, he dies at 24 instead of 21. Big deal. It wasn’t like he was making the most of his bonus years--He was just stuck in purgatory, he figured. Stuck between a longer-than-months life expectancy and dying young which, for Steve, was kind of like “rock and a hard place.”

“You need to eat some lunch.” Back to that argument then. Steve sighs and shifts in the arm chair he sits in when Peggy starts grousing at him for being in bed.

“Not hungry.”

“Tough shit.” Peggy sounds angry. One of those days, then.

“You gotta pick, Peg. Nothing sounds like it wants to stay down.”

“You don’t eat, I’m hauling your ass to Urgent Care or ER!” she yells behind her as she disappears into the kitchen again to fix him something to eat. By the sound of it, soup. Always soup when Steve won’t pick.

Peggy stays with him most of the time now. His mother stays with him when she doesn’t, or he stays with her, and sometimes he stays with Sam or vice versa, but ever since Dr. Erskine said depressed and slid a prescription for an antidepressant across the exam table, Steve hasn’t been allowed to be alone, just in case he decided to, like, speed up the whole dying young thing.

He doesn’t have the energy to kill himself, but that wasn’t really a compelling argument as far as his mother, Peggy, and Sam were concerned, so now he had 24/7 companionship.

“So after lunch I thought we could go to the park,” Peggy says, setting a tray set with soup, some red Gatorade and a banana smoothie down in front of him.

“Don’t really feel like walking.”

“We could take the wheelchair,” Peggy continues as though she hadn’t heard him, sitting across from him in the other armchair and looking out the window. “Some fresh air might be good for you.”

Steve kicks the oxygen concentrator, for the past four years,  was his ever-faithful companion. “Got plenty of air.”

Peggy fixes him with a stern gaze. “You’re going to support group today,” she says, in a voice that booked no arguments.

That was the other part of Dr. Erskine prescribing an antidepressant and his mother, Peggy, and Sam deciding he couldn’t be alone ever. Dr. Erskine had insisted on Steve attending a support group for Young Adults with Cancer. The weekly meetings were not Steve’s idea of a good time, plain and simple, and for the four months that he’d been going to the meetings, he’d only gotten out of them when he was hospitalized. It didn’t stop him from trying.

“If I’m expected to go to support group today, I want to take a nap first,” Steve says. “Not go to the park.”

“Eat your soup,” Peggy replies.

&

Steve wins the argument about napping versus going to the park, but that meant that he had to attend support group with minimal fussing, which Peggy gladly sacrifices fresh air for.

He does his best I’m miserable face when Peggy wakes him up to get ready, but it’s lost on Peggy, who has seen every variety of his I’m miserable face and knows when he’s miserable because he feels shittier than usual and when he’s miserable because he’s Depressed.

“When was the last time you put deodorant on?” she asks him.

“I don’t have the energy for deodorant,” he replies and Peggy rolls her eyes, fetching it out of the bathroom.

“We’re doing a shower when you get back,” she says, tugging the dirty t-shirt off and tossing it on the laundry hamper. “Or first thing in the morning if you’re too tired then.”

She brushes her fingers over the Hickman catheter, dark and scary against his thin chest, and Steve sighs. “Sharon’s coming over for a dressing change tomorrow, right?”

“Right,” Peggy says quietly. “So I guess we can wait.” She touches his port again and looks Sad, which Steve hates.

He’s known Peggy since they were kids; she’s his best friend, and as such, she puts up with way more than any best friend should have to. She’s also seen more of him than any best friend should have to, so Steve doesn’t protest when she helps him tug on the clean shirt and shoves his shriveled dick into a fresh pair of boxers and helps him into the clean sweatpants. He only sighs a very little bit when she combs his thinning hair and helps him tug a baseball cap on. The Yankees. His favorite. He’d been eighteen when he was diagnosed, so he was outside of the Make a Wish age range, but his mother had paid for season tickets anyway.

Peggy chats all the way through getting him dressed like it’s a normal thing, a twenty-three year old girl dressing her twenty-three year old best friend, and Steve supposes that, to them, it is a normal thing. He thinks of the framed poster in the cancer ward that says “Make a new normal.” He wonders if the author had this in mind when they wrote it.

Probably not; the people who wrote things like that usually thought of cancer patients in beanies, lip-synching in a YouTube video to “I’m a Survivor.”

“Thanks, Peg.”

“You’re welcome, Steve.” She offers him a smile and pecks him on the cheek.

They’d tried dating, once, five years ago, when Steve had been at his peak health (which was, admittedly, not that… peaky), and it had just been like dating his sister. Besides, Peggy was now dating Angie and was pretty happy about it. Happy enough that she’d taken to matchmaking for Steve, aided and abetted by the one person Steve could actually stomach socializing with at the support group—Natasha.

“Want to take the chair today? I won’t tell.”

A part of him does, but also doesn’t. He shrugs as Peggy switches him from the concentrator to the portable oxygen tank.

“We’ll take it, and see how you feel when you get there. Ready?”

&

The really annoying thing about support group, Steve decided about two meetings in, aside from the fact that he was being dragged in against his will, was that it was run by a guy named Nick who didn’t want to be there (and pretty clearly didn’t want to be there), and that most of the people who attended Support Group fell into two main categories: Survivors who wanted to talk about how hashtag blessed they were, or people like Steve, who were coming to support group because their doctors said they had to, and whose caregivers dragged them in

It makes for a pretty grim group, anyway, and Steve usually spends the time watching the clock and thinking about how the whole thing kind of makes him more suicidal than he already (supposedly) is. There’s one thing that makes support group bearable, and that is his friend Natasha. Steve doesn’t really have friends—aside from Peggy and Sam and his Mom—but he does have Natasha and while she may not be the friendliest person he’s ever met, she seems to like him okay, and she spends the whole time making under-her-breath comments about Nick and his eyepatch, which is something Steve can get behind.

Four months into support group, Steve finally greets Natasha when he comes in instead of just awkwardly sitting down next to her, so that’s a bonus. He guesses.

He manages to shake Peggy at the door after insisting he doesn’t need the wheelchair, and Peggy goes off to buy more food he’s not going to eat while he’s at group.

So usually he’ll come in, and say hi to Natasha, and then sit down while Nick rattles his way through a profanity-laced introduction. He’ll open the stage up for anyone who wants to share. Someone, undoubtedly, will, talking about remission or about treatments or about shaving their head, and then Nick will open the mic up for anyone new and then he’ll rattle his way through a profanity laced conclusion and then they’ll be done for another week. Natasha will ask him if he wants a cookie; he’ll say no, and she’ll shrug like, suit yourself, and then they’ll stand on the curb and make small talk until Peggy rolls up.

That’s how it usually goes.

This time, though, when Steve makes his way down to the room the support group is held in, Natasha is already deep in a conversation with someone Steve’s never seen before; a guy with dark hair and dark eyes, mouth twitched up in half a grin as he listens to whatever Natasha’s saying and then laughs, before responding in kind.

Steve freezes in the doorway, stopping so quickly that Clint trips over his portable oxygen container and curses. It makes quite the clatter and Natasha and the guy look up. Natasha grins and waves him over, and Steve sighs and schlepps over.

“Steve, good to see you’ve extended your eighteen extra months another week.”

“Natasha.”

“This is Bucky.” She leans back so that—Bucky can reach across to shake Steve’s hand. “He’s a Survivor, too. Bucky, this is Steve.”

Bucky looks like he wants to say something, but Nick smacks the podium.

“Alright, fuckers,” he says, and the meeting is in order.

They go around the circle and introduce themselves and Steve discovers that Bucky had carcinoma, but has been in remission for three months. Not before the sarcoma took his entire left arm, all the way up into the shoulder, and everyone murmurs their condolences for Bucky’s missing limb. Bucky waves them off.

“It was my life or my arm, you know?” he says and Steve dismisses Bucky as one of those incurable optimists. Bucky and Peggy would get along beautifully, he decides, and also decides that they’ll never meet, not in a million years.

Nick dismisses them with a “Okay, fuckers, next time,” and Natasha turns to him.

“I want froyo. You want froyo?”

“No,” Steve says, and Natasha beams.

“Great. I’ll text Peggy and tell her I’m taking you home. Come on.”

Natasha goes ahead, getting caught up in a conversation with Clint, leaving Steve and Bucky alone in the hard plastic chairs, awkwardly half-facing each other.

“Hey,” Steve says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Hey,” Bucky says, and grins, a grin that takes up basically his whole face. It’s too big to be strictly attractive—too wide and toothy for anyone to call it a “nice” smile, and it’s a little lopsided. Not that Steve can do much better, but. Whatever. Bucky’s got the kind of smile you see on Relay for Life pamphlets—wide and bright and hopeful.

“The nurses must’ve loved you,” Steve says, and then blushes. He hadn’t meant to say that, but Bucky laughs, shrugging his right shoulder.

“I dunno, I guess. Why do you say that?”

“You got a nice smile,” Steve says, and blushes again. “I just mean, like—you look like someone on a Relay for Life poster.” Christ. “Sorry. Lack of oxygen?”

Bucky laughs again and nudges Steve’s oxygen tank with his toe. “Lung cancer, huh? Little young for that, aren’t you? Start smoking when you were, like, seven?”

“Three, actually,” Steve says, and Bucky laughs a third time, surprised. “No, actually, much less exciting. I was asthmatic and they tried this revolutionary treatment, which really helped the asthma until it started growing cancer.”

“Yikes,” Bucky says, and shakes his head. “You still in treatment?”

“No,” Steve says. He pauses. He doesn’t want to share this part with Bucky, for some reason, wants to say yes, he’s in remission, or yes, he’s in treatment and the prognosis is great, but he takes a deep breath and sighs. “No, I—I was supposed to die eighteen months ago.”

Most people got awkward and quiet after that bombshell, which was usually preferable to Steve—for some reason, he doesn’t want Bucky to get awkward and quiet—to Steve’s surprise, he nods.

“So you’re a miracle, then.” He’s grinning, and Steve can hear the sarcasm in his voice.

Not that he’s wrong—by all rights, Steve is a miracle. He’s lived three times as long as he was supposed to.

“In the flesh,” he deadpans and Bucky laughs a fourth time.

“Steve! Bucky! Froyo! Let’s go!”

Bucky waves Natasha off and looks at Steve. “Alright, miracle boy. Time for Froyo.”

Steve grins. His cheeks ache.