#padmablossom

[mhalachai]

Do you have a cat? You're a great source for cute cat posts!

see, this is the tragedy in my life. I am so allergic to cats. Like, if you have a cat and i come into your house for five minutes? i’m risking an allergy-induced asthma attack. 

but i love cats so much. 

so i must spend my life looking at cat videos and cat gifs and admiring from afar

[mhalachai]

@padmablossom wrote: For your AMA weekend, I'd love to know what's going through Steve's head during this one...

But James wasn't done. "What the fuck, Steve? What kind of straight man goes around playing with shit like this?"

"Straight?" Steve repeated, pushing himself up off the counter. "I'm not straight. Bucky, I've been dating men since I was in college. I'm bi."

James froze, staring at Steve. He tried to speak, but his throat was stuck; he couldn't even breathe. What had Steve just said?

Then Steve went and made everything worse by saying, "And you know that, Bucky, I told you!"

James moved his mouth, but no sound came out. He pressed his hand to his face, trying to find some sense in the last few minutes. Finally, he managed, "You never told me shit, Steve!"

The color was starting to rise in Steve's cheeks, like it always had when he was a kid and he was furious, that slow deadly fury that usually ended in bloodshed on the playground. "I told you," he said, his voice lowering. "I wrote to you, and I told you and I said that I hoped you would still be my friend." Steve's voice was shaking. "And you never wrote back."

James' mind went blank for a startlingly long moment as he stared at Steve. His mind wouldn't connect with what Steve had just said. When had Steve written him? Especially to tell him something so important? The only time Steve had written James was in that year after he moved to New Jersey, exchanging letters back and forth, slower and slower as James found it so hard to respond to Steve, each letter killing James with loneliness, until…

James stopped breathing. Until that last letter from Steve, the one that James hadn't been able to open.

The last letter that was sitting upstairs, still unopened, in a box of things James' mother had saved after James left home to join the Army. A box of things James had shoved into a corner in the third floor storage room, buried under a box of Natasha's baby clothes where he wouldn't have to look at any reminder of his life before the Army.

He had to see that letter. He had to find it, and see if it really said what Steve said it did.

His feet moving of their own accord, James walked out of the kitchen without a word. Distantly, he heard Steve yell, "Bucky!" after him, but he didn't reply. He had to find that letter.

(Hands of Clay Chapter 20: Black Coffee)

I laughed out loud when I got this because I love this scene with all my heart, because before this happens, for over a full day, Steve and Bucky have been having two totally different conversations. 

At this point in the story, Bucky knows that Steve is straight and the kiss was just some drunken fuck up. And Steve knows that he’s in love with his best friend, that only a few days before Bucky agreed to go on an actual date with him, and that Bucky knows he’s bisexual because of the letter Bucky got from Steve when they were twelve explaining that. After which Bucky cut off all contact with Steve for years and yeah come to think of it Steve isn’t exactly over that.

And so Steve’s been stewing over this since the previous day, because yeah he knows he fucked up with the kiss and he’s defensive about that and also feeling guilty and he had this great idea over on the train that morning that he was going to get to Skye to take the kids away so he could talk everything out with Bucky and they’d fix everything and be perfect.

So when the above snippet starts, Steve sees his super awesome plan falling apart and in his desperation, he blows his top with the one thing he’s been meaning to ask Bucky since the moment he found Bucky again in that parking lot: 

Why didn’t you write me back? 

And now, I love Steve Rogers so much, but it literally never occurred to him that Bucky never read that letter. Poor baby Steve, having lost everything in his life over and over, he couldn’t believe that the one person he’d never lose was Bucky.

So Steve explodes and blurts out everything he’s been holding on the inside since he found Bucky again. 

And when he is at his most vulnerable, Bucky just walks away.

We’re seeing it through Bucky’s POV of course, and Bucky’s world has just been shaken to the core and he had to get to the letter, but in those few minutes when Steve’s alone in the kitchen, he’s  convinced that he’s driven Bucky away, that Bucky can’t accept that he’s bi, that it’s all over.

And for about three minutes, Steve is destroyed.

See, kids, this is why miscommunication is both terrible and the most delicious of tropes. 

[DVD Commentary Me]

[mhalachai]

Just came across a post about those George Clooney Nespresso commercials, and suddenly remembered that random revelation in HoC that James had a celebrity crush on him, resulting in a sudden headcanon that James stops to watch those dumb commercials every time they come on and Steve notices and then proceeds to tease him FOREVER! So, I had to reblog it. Sorry if that's super random. Hope you're having a nice day!

i love this idea!

But, because I am terrible, click play on the video and see where we’re going:

how about the one where, once Steve wheedles this little secret out of Bucky, he tries to tease him about it but Bucky just shuts down and Steve doesn’t quite understand why, Bucky never shuts down like this so he keeps gently poking and then Bucky leaves the room and when Steve follows, it’s to see James disappearing down the basement stairs.

“Daddy’s going to do laundry and he doesn’t need any help,” Natasha helpfully puts in from where the kids are doing their homework on the living room floor. 

“Did he tell you that?” Steve asks, still staring at the stairs.

“Yes.” Natasha sits back to look at her homework sheet. “How do you spell ‘house’?”

“Like this,” Clint says, and makes farting noises into his hands.

Steve has to intervene in the homework situation and so he’s still in the living room when Bucky comes back upstairs, arm full of clean towels. Bucky is very pointedly not looking at him.

“Kids, be friendly,” Steve instructs, then bolts after Bucky. “Hey, Buck, can we talk?” 

“Nothing to talk about,” Bucky says, his voice still painfully flat. “I’ll be down for dinner after I get these folded.”

“I can do that,” Steve says, wondering what he’s done, wondering what he’s not seeing. Bucky hadn’t shut him out like this in months.

“I can fold some fucking towels,” Bucky says, his voice getting low. “Leave me the fuck alone, okay?”

“Bucky, please.” Steve is not above begging. “Tell me what I’m not seeing here.”

Bucky walks past him into the bedroom, drops the towels on the bed, and begins folding them one-handed. Steve has enough common sense to stay back and in Bucky’s direct line of sight. “Fucking drop it,” is all he says.

“Okay.” Steve sits on the edge of the chair by the window. Maybe if he waits, some sort of divine insight will strike him.

Bucky folds one bath towel, then two hand towels. When he picks up the edge of the next bath towel, though, he stares at the hem for a minute.

Steve holds his breath.

“I’m happy for you,” Bucky says out of nowhere, going back to his folding. “Goin’ off to Jersey, getting that A+ family, all that.”

Steve doesn’t move. Of all the things happening at this moment, Bucky does not sound in the least bit happy.

“Like, yeah, musta been great,” Bucky goes on, and there’s bitterness seeping into his voice now. “Where someone finding out you had a crush on some guy wasn’t the end of the world.”

Oh.

Oh.

Steve swallows down his first reaction, half guilt at not thinking, half blinding rage at much Bucky had gone through growing up. “Bucky, I’m sorry,” is all he can say.

Bucky lets the half-folded towel drop from his hand as he sits on the edge of the bed. “It ain’t you,” he said, bitterness falling away into pure exhaustion. “This ain’t ever been about you, Steve. It’s…” He pushes his hair out of his eyes. “It’s just, with everything I got now, you and Nat and Clint and my job and everything…”

When he doesn’t continue, Steve cautiously crosses the room to sit at Bucky’s side. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t push.

“Sometimes I dream I’m back in my dad’s house,” Bucky says after a minute of silence. “And it’s like…” His voice stutters to a halt as he reaches for Steve’s hand. “I’m fifteen and I’m drowning and there’s no way out. And some days, that shit happens when I’m awake, too.”

Steve wonders if he can convince Tony to build him a time machine to go back in time to stop this conversation. Or to go back to when Bucky was a kid and change everything. “Bucky, I’m sorry.”

Bucky squeezes Steve’s hand tight. “Ain’t you,” he said again. “Who’da thunk it that my fuckin’ PTSD could get triggered by you talking about my high school crush?”

He’s trying to smile, and it’s terrible. “I won’t mention it again,” Steve promises.

Bucky lets out an exasperated sigh, and he reaches up to shove Steve’s shoulder. “If you stop talking about shit that sets me off, we ain’t gonna have a fucking thing to talk about.” He stands up. “And stop lookin’ so serious, god.”

For all that Bucky’s gone back to joing as his coping mechanism, Steve can’t shake the bone-deep sadness and anger that he feels, over all Bucky has gone through in his life. “I should have been more considerate.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Look at you, with your fancy ten-dolllar college words.”

“I’m pretty sure that Natasha has ‘considerate’ as one of her spelling words this month,” Steve says as he stands.

“No, she doesn’t, because I’d have heard her whining about it,” Bucky contradicted. “Come on, enough of me flopping around up here, we gotta get dinner on.”

“Bucky.” Steve catches Bucky’s hand on the way out of the bedroom. Bucky pauses, then steps back into Steve’s loose embrace. “I love you.”

“Good.” Bucky puts his arm around Steve’s shoulders. “I love you too. You’re a pain in my ass, but I love you.”

“Hey!” comes a shriek from downstairs. “I’m hungry!”

“Me too! Hey, Natasha, let’s go eat cheese!”

“CHEESE!”

“Jesus Christ and Mary,” Bucky mutters, tearing himself away from Steve and running for the stairs. “Hey, kids! No cheese before dinner!”

Steve follows more slowly, wishing he wasn’t so bumbling and careless when it came to Bucky. 

One thing was for sure - no more teasing Bucky about his crush on George Clooney.

(This resolve was tested, however, when Bucky bought himself a Nespresso machine for his next birthday and set it up in the kitchen for ‘when I just want a cup of coffee, geeze, Steve, don’t look at me like that’)

(Steve isn’t sure if Bucky is trolling him, but he’s happy that Bucky is happy, either way)

bonus Nespresso commercial for context

[mhalachai]

Supremely random HoC ask, if you don't mind! I get the sense that James does/will do a lot of poking Steve awake in the middle of the night to have emotional talks. Do you think Steve notices this trend? Why do you think they have the hard conversations in the middle of the night?(I'm probably projecting because I wake up in the middle of night anxious all the time, which annoys me tremendously because I'd rather be sleeping).

i don’t see James as deliberately waking Steve up, but i can see him lying awake with worry and when Steve inevitably wakes up (because a tense wakeful body in bed can pull a sleeper back to consciousness) and Steve asks about it, Bucky would start talking... a more mild version of what happened on the roof in chapter 26. 

And yea Steve will notice that there are some things that Bucky can only talk about when it’s the two of them, at night, when Bucky doesn’t have to put on his mental armour of being invincible. Steve is the type who can talk things out more readily, but he knows that all he can do is to listen when Bucky is ready to talk.

[mhalachai]

3 and 10 for the writing ask, pretty please!

3 Do you write fics from start or finish, or jump around? 

Oh, it has to be start to finish. i can’t even do that thing where you say “OK action happens here” if I can’t write a scene... which can lead to some real head-bang-across-the-wall moments when I’m stuck on progressing a scene. 

I think the only time I’ve written in any other way was on my CQL story, the Sparrow's curious song, where I wrote 40% of the epilogue (not as an epilogue, but as the original idea), realized I had something that would be a good end, went back and wrote the bulk of the story, then came back and finished up the epilogue.  

10 Do you enjoy writing dialogue, exposition, or plot the most? 

Oh, dialogue all the way. I wrap my stories around the voices of the characters, rather than fit their voices around the action (or plot, as described in teh question). When I am creating a new story, the words of the POV character (be they spoken or the thought process) drives everything.  

Even when I have to do exposition, it usually feels best to be when framed though a particular character voice (the thought process) - it feels artificial otherwise.  

(from the Behind the Scenes of Fic Writing meme)

[mhalachai]

Curious: do you create playlists to accompany your writing or fanfics? (I think I remember you having one for hands of clay, but I could just be making that up.) How do you use them? Does it help with inspiration, or just nice background when you're writing?

I do!

I have both a) garbage playlists to accompany the creation of the stories, helpfully titled "misc" or "what are you even doing" in my Spotify library. Less with the actual writing part (I use the MyNoise website for that) but for the scene generation, thinking up the dialogue, the character relationships, and of course the action sequences.

(They're titled such because most of the songs really have no connection to the story's theme, it's pure aural motivation)

And then b) when the story is getting ready to go, I have on occasion created a "finished" playlist to accompany the published story, based on some of those key songs that I feel well-convey the musical vibe of things.

I have two such playlists on Spotify right now, one for Hands of Clay and the other for Hour of the Wolf.

[mhalachai]

If you're up for headcanons, pre-HoC, how would James react if one of the dance moms or dads from Natasha's ballet class hit on him? Don't know what made me think of that...

when it’s one of the dance moms, Bucky’s reaction is a little like this:

(that end is him trying to be nice about it but kinda looking like a muppet because wat)

And when any of the ballet dads were around and if they were flirting with Bucky, Bucky was all “Manly men married with children, being nice! Nice guy passing the time with me, also manly man!”* and he never picks up on the flirting with it. Like, seriously, look at how much time the man spent thinking that Steve, who was flirting with every fiber in his large and muscular body for months on end, was just being friendly. 

* Note: Bucky has never in his life thought of himself like a ‘manly man’, but you see my point

[mhalachai]

#20: Do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

hahahahaha these days I’m a disaster either way.

No, okay, I guess you can call it long sessions. Back in my heyday I used to be able to knock out like 7,000 words a day (back when I had a no-brainer job and time to kill on weekends). Now, I still do most of my writings on weekends, in longish sit-down chunks. 

i tried to do that whole “write 500 words a day” but I find that really need to get my head into the zone; mostly because I don’t actually have much of a plan for what I’m writing, so I need to get back into the minds of my characters and plots. That takes an unfortunate amount of time.