Roll On by jaxington, binding by DCB Bindery (dontcallmebree)
Summary:
In 1938, there's a bar in Brooklyn called Sully’s where people are safe to be themselves. Behind the bar, a girl pours drinks. She's always got a big smile for Steve and she says queer like it's a good thing. On a regular basis, she takes his shoulders in her hands and tries to shake sense into him, saying, "When will you do something about that best friend of yours?"
In 2012, Bucky’s gone, but Steve’s not, and the girl’s hands are too old to shake him. She does her best to make him see sense anyway.
Steve had people who loved him before the war, and it turns out a few of them are still around when he finally comes home.
Specs:
Bradel binding, rounded spine, single color bead headband, 317 pages, B6. Check out the second and third volume featuring more shots of the complete series.
Thanks @jaxington for giving me permission to bind your excellent work. Roll On has shaped so much of my understanding of these characters, and I’m so honored to have a physical copy!
On the process:
This first foray into rounding worked out well enough, though it gave me a lot of trouble with casing in. Making pink single color bead headbands from scratch took way longer than expected, but I really liked the splash of color in the end product!
It was really fun figuring out how to keep the series uniform while maintaining variety, which was present in the typesetting, matching headbands, and coordinated endpapers.
More DCB Bindery Projects
(Submission for @steverogersbingo Card SB2003 / Square D5 Twink Steve)
Sister, don’t cry anymore; lay your weary head here with me. Rebecca Proctor née Barnes, beloved younger sister to Bucky (and sometimes Steve too). Below are my Top 5 Favorite Stories:
“Roll On” (M, 89k) by jaxington
In 1938, there's a bar in Brooklyn called Sully’s where people are safe to be themselves. Behind the bar, a girl pours drinks. She's always got a big smile for Steve and she says queer like it's a good thing. On a regular basis, she takes his shoulders in her hands and tries to shake sense into him, saying, "When will you do something about that best friend of yours?"
In 2012, Bucky’s gone, but Steve’s not, and the girl’s hands are too old to shake him. She does her best to make him see sense anyway.
Steve had people who loved him before the war, and it turns out a few of them are still around when he finally comes home.
+ Pre-War to Alt CW. A stunning three part series spanning 300k words. Part 1 focuses on Becca, Part 2 on Becca’s wife, and Part 3 is Post WS to Alt CW from Bucky’s perspective. Bucky Barnes recovers, Found Family, and love true love. It’s not marked as complete, but can be read as such
-☆-
“My Brother, The Hero” (G, 16k) by Odsbodkins
Becca Barnes is eight years old, and her big brother can do no wrong.
The events of the two Captain America movies, from the perspective of one of the sisters Bucky leaves behind.
+ Pre-War to Post WS. Becca adores Steve and Bucky, and is heartbroken after the Valkyrie. Decades later, she reunites with them both
-☆-
“Now! That’s What I Call 90’s Slow Jams” (M, 10k) by deadonarrival
Steve goes home for the wedding of Becca Barnes and while he’s there he runs into his old crush. Her brother. Except now they are both hot as shit. Oh no whatever will happen.
+ Modern AU. Childhood friends reunited, mutual pining, fake (and not so fake) dating!
-☆-
“Geriatric Road Trip, 2015″ (NR, 4k) by what_alchemy
Bucky was the eldest of four.
+ Post WS. Outside POV. Becca’s grandson takes his grandma, granduncle, and grandaunt to see Steve in DC.
-☆-
“There Are Worse Ways to Make Friends” (T, 4k) by Alexicon
Becca Barnes breaks into her brother's apartment through his window. She finds out later that it is not her brother's apartment.
+ Modern AU. Steve bonds with an unexpected guest and meets her hot older sibling
-☆-
-☆- And a freebie! -☆-
“cascades.” (M, 152k) by orange_crushed
“Holy shit,” Howard says, crackling through the speakers. “You alive in there?” Lying is a sin, of course, but Steve’s not sure what else he can do. He’s already lied to the government and Bucky and God Almighty; and himself, himself most of all. He ought to tell the truth. That he’s not quite what they hoped for. That perhaps they should put him back into the ocean.
“Probably,” he says, instead, listening to Howard’s tinny laughter; and waits for the blast doors to unlock.
+ Post Valkyrie. Steve absorbs the tesseract, comes back with teleporting powers, saves Bucky, saves the world. Reposted from All Time Favorites.
++“I know it’s crazy. But this is crazy,” he says, and raises his metal hand. “What Steve can do—that's crazy. It’s all crazy. Our whole fucking lives. I have to,” he says, and whips them around a turn. “I have to believe, he’s—I have to.” Rebecca considers it: considers what she’d do, how far she’d go, if she thought there was a chance—even an inkling. A feeling. A sign. She knows that she would drive to San Diego, to Mongolia, to the moon. She’d leave right now, without a bag, without a dollar in her pocket or a forwarding address. Without anything at all but a fool’s hope; without anything at all but deathless, unkillable love.
-☆-
*More Becca Barnes in the Space, Food Competitions, Alpha Steve, Fake Married, and Christmas Lists
Long Shadows | jaxington | 2 Works - 391k | Sep ‘13 - Aug ‘15
In which the God of Mischief meets his match, receives a taste of his own medicine, stops believing in coincidence, and finds something vaguely resembling peace in the form of a small woman with a big voice...
Note: (In honour of the impending release of the Loki miniseries and my sceptical optimism for it, I'm highlighting a few canon-adjacent Loki works that can pass the time between new episodes or, if you're like me, distract from new content long enough to miss the first wave of inevitable Discourse.)
More than a few works around the fandom have begun on the premise of watching Loki's off-screen movements on Midgard before Things Kick Off; on AO3 at least, few have utilised the idea to such an extent jaxington is able to with Long Shadows. Nearly 400k words sees us through Avengers and The Dark World, with a few Guardians guest-starring further on. Characters develop against a spectrum of events, relationships form and re-form, trauma is faced and processed. And throughout everything, happiness is found in the smallest things.
- Author's Tumblr | @jaxington -
- Series on AO3 | Author's Page on FF.net -
"We're going for full disclosure here, Miss Tate." Nick Fury, with every last ounce of his limited patience, glowers across the stainless steel table at a small woman absently braiding her wild blond hair. "Do you understand what we need from you? Time is a pretty big factor and we're running out of it."
The woman sighs heavily and gives one nod as she continues to braid. It's a nervous habit, one she thought to have conquered as a teenager but given all she's been through in the last few weeks its reemergence was inevitable.
Or maybe it's been the last few months. She can't even be sure.
She glances up briefly, gaze flickering from world's first superhero to god to billionaire playboy philanthropist before she goes back to staring at the tabletop.
"Sorry," she murmurs. "I'm not really one for words."
And it's the truth. Eleanor Tate spent half her senior year of high school in total silence. Although she moved on from this childish coping mechanism, boisterousness never quite returned.
She is just full of nervous habits at the moment. The intimidating people scrutinizing her do nothing to help her already frayed nerves.
Her penchant for silence is proving quiet cumbersome to the obviously irritated band gathered in the helicarrier's large bridge area. These people are apparently part of something called SHIELD. She only learned of their existence yesterday when they disturbed her attempted escape from the underground bunker that has passed as her home for months now.
Or maybe it's been weeks.
"Well, find them quickly, Miss Tate," snaps Fury, his good eye narrowing in frustration. "Let's start simple. How did you first meet the war criminal known as Loki?"
The woman stops her braiding abruptly, sitting up a little straighter in her hard swivel chair. She tucks one leg under her slight frame and hugs her other knee to her chest, picking absently at the seam of her standard issue SHIELD stretchy pants.
"How long has it been?" she asks. "Since he took me? How long?"
Fic: Roll On by jaxington
Reader: BrickGrass
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Ship: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Rating: Mature
Summary:In 1938, there's a bar in Brooklyn called Sully’s where people are safe to be themselves. Behind the bar, a girl pours drinks. She's always got a big smile for Steve and she says queer like it's a good thing. On a regular basis, she takes his shoulders in her hands and tries to shake sense into him, saying, "When will you do something about that best friend of yours?"
In 2012, Bucky’s gone, but Steve’s not, and the girl’s hands are too old to shake him. She does her best to make him see sense anyway.
Steve had people who loved him before the war, and it turns out a few of them are still around when he finally comes home.
Oh wow, I've finally finished this thing :O I've been working on this podfic since maybe last christmas, and it is pretty amazing to have it done especially since its maybe 10x longer than anything else I've ever posted.
Reader's Notes: I'd just like to thank KathoraKiryu for being amazing and cheerleading the hell out of me, without you and your lovely compliments I probably wouldn't have finished this thing. Thanks to my friend Gwen, who will likely never read this due to not reading fanfic at all :D You Beta listened to a remarkable amount of this despite being really freaked out by how different my reading voice is to my speaking voice. And Thank you to Jaxington, THIS STORY IS SO GOOD AND YOU ARE AMAZING!!!!!
I'm probably going to record the rest of this series at some point, but please don't sit around waiting, I'm slow and I have many exams.
Podfic Post: Link to AO3
@jaxington I did end up writing! Not nearly as much as I should have - my self-motivation is SO staggeringly bad - but I got a little done, and at least started a pivotal scene in a way I don’t immediately loathe, so. Could be worse.
Meanwhile, have fun with your family! I’m usually in that boat by now, but the family members who usually come to stay with us are bailing on us this year (it’s a family tiff and just about as dramatic as we get, but still. In my mind, we’re feuding.), so the first part of my week is quieter than usual. But tomorrow and onward will probably be pretty crazy, so I’ll be with you in holiday-related writing absence soon enough. Why is your 10-year being held during Thanksgiving week?? Seems inconvenient for everyone.
I want to post snippets, but also at this rate, given how little I write when I’m not playing the game, I will have posted the entire fic before it ever gets published. The real answer is to just write more, but...I can’t seem to do that. Oy. Where did November go??
Story by @jaxington
Art by @wellthisisembarrassing
Written for @samwilsonbirthdaybang
Story Rating: Teen
Art Rating: General Audiences
Main Pairing: Sam/T’Challa
Background Pairings: Steve/Bucky, Okoye/Ayo
Warnings: none
Other Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Secret Identity, Identity Porn, Mentions of PTSD, Recovery, Food Word Count: 64,940
Sam didn’t expect to have the full college experience, going back to school after years in the Air Force. He’s older than everyone else, still figuring out how to be a civilian again, and never really believed in the whole go to college and find yourself thing. Yet somehow, Sam ends up with a group of kooky friends, a major he adores, an addiction to caffeine, and a fling with a beautiful boy, who is sure to break his heart when he goes back to Wakanda at the end of the school year.
“So let me get this straight,” says Sam, cocking head to the side as he studies the kid in the desk next to him. “You sit in on history lectures and go argue with the professor during her office hours? For fun?”
Challa looks faintly embarrassed, hunching his shoulders and wringing his hands. For the first time, his haughty composure slips and his perfect posture disappears. He looks smaller suddenly, nervous and unsure.
“Yes?” His answer sounds like a question.
Sam grins at him. “Cool,” he says, begrudgingly turning away as the professor starts class.
Thin Blue Flame by jaxington, binding by DCB Bindery (dontcallmebree)
Summary:
The tiny, blond lump in the bed, his name is Steve Rogers. It comes back to him while he sleeps. He closes his eyes thinking about the lump and he wakes up with a name, like he’d never lost it.
Steven Grant Rogers.
He was important, once. The soldier can’t figure out why.
In which Bucky Barnes makes his way back to Brooklyn and Rachel Rosenbaum helps him figure out what's important.
Specs:
Bradel binding, rounded spine, single color bead headband, 563 pages, B6. Check out the first and second volume featuring more shots of the complete series.
All the gratitude to @jaxington. This series is truly such a touchstone for me and Thin Blue Flame is one hell of a conclusion. A must-read stucky classic.
On the process:
The longest work I’ve bind to date, not to mention a first multi-volume series. By the time I got to this third volume I had a better grasp of things and I’m real happy with how it turned out. The endpaper & cover pairing is also a highlight.
Timelines, character povs, and formatting were most varied in this volume, and I had a good time figuring out a comprehensive and stripped back typeset that suited the whole series. Learned a lot and very pleased with the end product!
More DCB Bindery Projects
(Submission for @steverogersbingo Card SB2003 / Square C3 Free Space)
