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[gattyswriting]

if oscar wins the championship lando will kiss him on live tv and they’ll make sweet love before the cooldown room cameras even cut

[toxitrosia]

[smlmsworld]

Chapters: 15/18 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sharon Carter (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel) Additional Tags: Post-Movie: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Canon Divergence - Post-Movie: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Post-Movie: The Avengers (2012), Canon Divergence - Post-Movie: The Avengers (2012), Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Made Up Science, Bucky Barnes Doesn't Remember Steve Rogers, A bit Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Angst, POV Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers trying to find his place in this new world, But he just wants his Bucky, Moral Dilemmas, Steve’s questionable decisions

Summary:

Steve Rogers was found in the ice. Now he's navigating the 21st century, being back in Brooklyn, being part of the Avengers, trying to find his place in this strange new world. Then one day, in his local bodega, everything gets a whole lot stranger.

-----

“Is that everything?”

The voice hits his ears. Steve’s eyes snap up in shock. And then the world stops turning.

Bucky. Bucky is there. Bucky is there, in front of him, on the other side of the counter, looking at him. Bucky—his best friend, who fell from that train, who died right in front of him—is standing there, looking at him.

Chapter 15

Chapter text in entirety (’cause it’s short ☺)

Three weeks. It’s been three weeks since it all went wrong.

Steve can’t really fathom it. It feels like a lifetime. More than one.

He only knows it isn’t because Natasha keeps him informed. She knows everything now. Almost everything at least. She doesn’t know he fell in love. That…that’s the one thing he holds onto. Keeps for himself, wrapped around his heart, choking him, killing him, keeping him alive. But she took the files to Bucky. She’s been his liaison with SHIELD, helping him to understand everything, getting him to see a therapist, helping him accept it all. So Steve knows he’s okay. Not good, not after having such a bomb dropped on him, but as well as can be expected. That’s what Natasha tells him.

Steve is glad for that at least. That’s all that matters. He’s not doing well, but that’s what he deserves. That’s how it should be. Staring at his walls, remembering when they used to have colour, when Bucky was here, and how suddenly they turned to grey again. How everything did.

He feels just as frozen as he was in the ice. It feels like he lost a part of himself and now he can’t function right. The idea of that only makes him hurt more, thinking about Bucky when he lost his arm, and the pain and fear he must have felt, being there all alone. Praying for Steve to find him. The horror of it when someone else did. How he must have felt Steve had abandoned him. So Steve deserves to feel like this. Bucky’s felt worse. And it was all his fault. Just like it is now.

And the thing is, Steve has come to realise just how much he deserves this pain. It’s like he couldn’t see before, lost in a haze of happiness, but now everything is sharp and clear. Being with Bucky, lying to him…it was wrong. It was so wrong of him and yet, he couldn’t see that. He just wanted him so much that he let everything else fade away. All reason, all logic, lost to what he wanted.

He knows now though that that’s the real reason he held back, kept things from developing further physically between them. It wasn’t because he was scared or didn’t know what he wanted. When he’s truthful with himself, he realises that he wanted everything with Bucky. Wanted to feel his body against his own, feel his soft skin, touch him and kiss him and be with him. The last decent part of himself stopped him though. Because it would have been a lie, a betrayal. It would have been taking advantage, even more than he already had, in a way that disgusts him now he thinks about it.

But he does think about it. He thinks about Bucky kissing him, thinks about holding his hand, holding him close. The affection in his eyes. The way he looked at Steve like no one else does. He can’t believe he had that, for one shining brief moment, and now it’s all gone. He misses it so much.

But more than the affection, he just misses Bucky. He misses him so much that it makes him feel physically sick, which he didn’t think was even possible with the serum. Part of him is gone. He wakes every day to nothingness. He feels like a living corpse most days.

He stares at the few pictures he has of them over and over again. Feels like he’s choking on the loss when he does. He wills his phone to ring, but it never does. He starts and stops a million messages, never sends them, hovers over the call button and then lets the screen go dark. He writes a letter and then tears it up. Because he can’t try to fix this. Bucky doesn’t want him to. He hasn’t reached out and Steve has to respect that. It’s the one thing he can do, to do right by Bucky for once. This is his reality now.

He goes to work, but only because it’s better than staying in his apartment that now holds so few memories of Bucky and yet far too many at the same time to be able to stand being there.

His team know what happened. He doesn’t know how much Natasha told them, but he said she could, but that he didn’t want to talk about it. He couldn’t pull on the fake smile in front of them. Not this time.

They look at him with pity sometimes, but they don’t ask him. They stay focused on whatever job they have to do. Steve finds himself wishing for more supervillains to show up, because the only time he can almost get out of his head is when he’s fighting.

He throws himself into confrontations with no limits, letting go with his full strength, because he can and because it hurts. Sometimes he feels bones crack and it’s excruciating until his body heals, but he doesn’t let on to anyone. He can fight through it. He finds he likes the pain because for a brief moment, just a split second, it takes over everything. It doesn’t last long enough to help. Everything changes back to grey, cold fog that he can’t breathe through.

Sharon finds him at lunch one day, poking at his food. His appetite is way down and he’s learning it is possible for him to lose weight, which is semi-interesting to learn, even if it doesn’t matter to him if he shrinks down to nothingness.

He realises he hasn’t seen Sharon in a while. She’s probably furious with him. He didn’t listen to her, he didn’t figure things out. He just stumbled along and ended up hurting Bucky, just like she thought he would. Still, she slides into the chair opposite him, putting her lunch tray down, as he glances over, probably realising he wouldn’t ask her to join him if he had a choice.

Instead of the anger he expects, she gives him a small, sad smile though. He thinks he’d prefer the anger. But then she picks up her fork and gestures for him to do the same, an odd offer of kindness, and Steve can’t bring himself to throw that back in her face, so he lifts his fork as well. They eat in silence.

“I miss him too,” she states, twenty minutes later.

Steve just looks over at her. He almost wants to yell at her, to tell her she has no idea what missing him is, but he feels ashamed for thinking that straight away. Because he can see in her eyes that she cares. Not in the same way he does, but that doesn’t matter. It’s just as valid, he realises.

“He’s pretty mad at me,” she explains, and Steve supposes everything came out then. Bucky knows about Sharon.

“I’m sorry,” he manages, because he never even thought of that. It didn’t occur to him to mention it when he told Bucky the truth. He told him everything he thought mattered. But now he realises, Sharon did matter. The thought of it needles at him, that he made Bucky lose a friend.

“I’m sorry,” she says back to him, eyes understanding, and then she reaches out and lightly touches his hand where it’s on the table, resting hers on top for just a moment.

Steve swallows and clenches his jaw, trying to keep it together. It…it’s nice to have someone who understands, at least the tiniest bit. He doesn’t deserve the attempt at comfort, but he finds he’s grateful for it all the same.

He looks down at his plate and nods.

****

Three more weeks and the plant Natasha got him is dead. Yet another one of his casualties. Steve throws it in the trash.

♥♥♥

Poster’s note:

Take heart!  @deadto27​ dearly loves Stucky, and once they’re at their nadir, our intrepid and beloved author will deliver them into sunlight and happiness!  Don’t believe me?  Check out @deadto27​‘s works in AO3!  They’re ALL keepers!  ♥♥♥  @smlmsworld​

[intelligentchristianlady]

welcome to these United States of Dumbfuckistan

what the hell just happened?

Another newsletter for you. This one is much more casual, a very easy read, and uses, um, Adult language.

[snekjin]

Ugly Sweaters with MacKenzie Entwistle and Jake McCabe

[lgbtally4ever]

I discovered this great channel with a variety of games and games how-like videos. Some are like this—gay dating game!

[neo-culture-taste]

Subscribe! - Another clothing haul video (sexy edition)

Pairing: Johnny x Reader (fem)

Genre: AU, romance, comedy, fluff

Word count: 3182

Summary: A YouTube inspired drabble series where you and your boyfriend upload videos catering to the couple tag.

Author’s Note: Felt a bit nostalgic. This one practically wrote itself. I apologize in advance for all the cheese  - D

For other members, see masterlist.

The video opened with your boyfriend grinning into the lens as he held the camera high in the air, making good use of the wide angle to reveal the space of your living room with you standing not too far away in the distance. 

“Whaddup Johfam--Oh, shit, wait,”  Johnny stopped himself mid-sentence to laugh at himself when he realized he made a mistake in his introduction. “This isn’t my channel.”

“Gimmie that,” you said as you rushed to his side to swipe the camera from him, which was way out of your reach. “I knew you were going to try and take over my channel one day.”

Still laughing, your boyfriend handed you the camera. “I didn’t do it on purpose. It came out naturally. It’s a habit.”

“Yeah sure it is,” you said suspiciously. “I’m watching you.” You opened your eyes as wide as they could go as you gazed at him. He mimicked your expression, commencing the staring contest. But it was short lived, as you stretched out your face comically, causing the both of you to burst into laughter.

The video cut to you centered in the frame, the camera once again being held up by the long arm of your boyfriend. “Hey everybody! It’s me again. And this sasquatch is here because today we’re doing another episode of...Johnny’s. Fashion. Evaluation!” You said the title of the segment very dramatically and emphasized each word with equally as dramatic poses done by both you and your boyfriend. “You all loved the first one so much we figured we’d treat you all today,” you said through a big smile after straightening up. “Johnny, what we got? Tell them what we got.”

“Today we got four outfits,” Johnny stated like an announcer for a sports game.

“Four,” you repeated, and held up four fingers on one hand.

“Four themes.”

“Mmhmm.” You held up four more fingers with your other hand.

“Four evaluations.”

“Cuatro evaluaciones.”

Johnny couldn’t help but laugh at your sudden switch to a different language. He tried to hold it in, but he was unable to stop the snort that came from his nose as he attempted to hold back his smile. Unable to resist your cuteness, he put his free arm around your shoulders and hugged you close. You took this opportunity to lay your head against his shoulder.

“So I’m going to give Y/N’s outfits a letter grade like we did the last time,” he continued with the introduction.

“And he’s going to say whether or not it’s a smash or pass.”

Johnny’s face twisted in surprise as he turned to face you. “Woah, woah, wait.”

“What?” you asked with a knowing grin.

“We didn’t do that in the first one.”

“Yeah, but these outfits today need those ratings.”

Blinking, Johnny stood in silence briefly as he processed what you were saying, then his eyes quickly lit up and his mouth fell open in pleasant surprise. You simply smiled back at him with a waggle of your eyebrows, prompting him to look into the camera like he had just won a prize.

~~~

The video cut to a view of the entryway of your hallway. You poked your head around the corner, making sure you didn’t reveal the rest of your body to Johnny. “So this is the 'I'm late for my prime time sitcom audition after being rejected five times and the barista spelled my name wrong on my grade iced caramel macchiato with three expresso shots' outfit.”

Johnny laughed out loud behind the camera. “What even is that?”

“It’s the theme, babe,” you explained to him like it was obvious. “You’ll see in a second.” You pulled your head back out of sight, then came out fully to pose in the middle of the entryway like a model in a fashion show. You were wearing a high necked, short sleeved, black and white, horizontal striped cropped top with a tie in the front, matched with a pair of black shorts and a simple black belt. On your feet, you wore socks with the same design as your top inside a pair of black booties. For accessories, you wore a chunky, silver chain necklace, a set of silver bangles on your left wrist, and a pair of black oversized sunglasses over your eyes.

“Oh, nice. Very nice,” you boyfriend complimented, genuinely impressed. He stood up from his spot on the couch and grabbed the camera as he moved towards you to get a closer look. “I like that your socks match your shirt,” he began his evaluation. “And this chain is a really nice touch. The sunglasses are a bit much, though.”

“Really?” You took off the sunglasses and looked at your boyfriend expectantly. “What about now?”

“Hmm,” he hummed in thought. “Try putting them on your head.” You did as suggested. “Now that’s fashion. Johnny approves.”

You smiled at him brightly, proud of the ensemble you put together. “What’s my grade?”

“An A- since I had to help you.”

You puckered your lips in acknowledgment. “That’s fair. But would you smash or pass?”

“I mean…” Johnny hesitated, causing you to raise an eyebrow inquisitively at him. “This is like something you’d wear normally, so it’s not like super striking, y’know?”

“So...are you saying you’d pass on me in my normal clothes?”

“No, of course not! It’s you that makes these clothes hot for me, so yeah I’d def smash. But if this was on anybody else, I’d pass. No offense to anyone else who dresses like this. It’s just a normal outfit to me.”

You side eye him, pretending you aren’t fully convinced by his explanation. “Sure. Nice save.”

He chuckled at your expression. “I gave you an A! That means I like it.”

“You wouldn't have taken off points if you really liked it! Just say you think the way I normally dress is boring so we can move on,” you said in mock offense.

He continued to laugh. “Y/N, stop! You’re going to make them think I’m an asshole.”

“Then stop being one, geeez,” you said with a dramatic roll of your eyes, but you were unable to keep the smile off your face.

“Y/NNNN, “ he whined your name.

“Alright, alright! I'm kidding everyone! You all know my Johnny’s a big sweetheart.” You stuck your tongue out at the lens, officially ending your little ruse. “Oh, and go subscribe to his channel if you haven’t already.”

“Yeah cuz I actually am an asshole on purpose over there.”

“Pfffft!”

~~~

The video cut once again to the view of your head peeking around the halfway entrance. “Okay, yeah. The first one was kind of mild. But this one is going to be hot! The theme is ‘a high class woman sitting alone at the bar who keeps getting free drinks from other patrons while she waits for her blind date only to be catfished by them in the end, but she doesn’t really care because she plans to go home with the bartender anyway.’”

“I have low expectations after the first weird theme you made up.”

You scoffed. “Just for that, I’m not coming out.”

“I’m kidding! Come out!”

You walked around the corner and posed dramatically before you began walking the rest of the way into the living room as if you were walking down a runway. You were wearing a tight, dark red mini dress that hugged your every curve. It was a halter neck dress with a very low neckline that exposed quite a bit of your cleavage. You didn’t wear any jewelry around your neck since the straps of the dress were made of gold chains, so instead you wore a pair of dangling gold earrings. On your feet, you wore a pair of strappy gold stilettos.

“Dayuuuuum!”

“Like what you see?” You asked Johnny before doing more sexy poses. 

“You look good!”

“I know I do. Check out the back.” You turned around to reveal the open back part of the dress.

“Oh my g--smash. Hella smash,” he rated the outfit without hesitation.

“Not yet! You didn’t do the evaluation,” you scolded him.

“A+.”

“No, Johnny, focus! You have to talk about the presentation.”

“Oh right,” He picked up the camera and moved closer. “I really like the way you matched all of the gold stuff. The straps on this dress are really pretty and they really accentuate.…” He trailed off as he fully admired the front of your outfit, and his gawking caused the camera to linger on your chest for a bit too long. He cleared his throat once he gathered his wits and remembered what he was supposed to be doing. “Those.”

“Johnny!” You quickly brought your hands to your chest to cover it from your boyfriend’s horny gaze.

“Look, everyone. She’s showing us her matching bracelet and ring set. But they’re kind of in the way of the best part of the outfit.” He attempted to move your hands away, but you swatted him away.

“Stop before I go take it off!” you threatened.

“You stop before I take it off.” 

“John, oh my gosh!” You turned around completely from the camera and looked back at him, playing coy. “You’re going to get my video demonetized.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll stop.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I won’t.”

~~~

“This one is even hotter than the last one,” you said after the video clipped to the next scene. You weren’t peeking your head in the entryway this time. Instead you were completely hidden around the corner.

 “I like the sound of that,” your boyfriend answered excitedly.

“So this is ‘the boss bitch sitting on top of her golden throne surrounded by siberian tiger statues in her music video for her new chart topping, number one hit single’. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, bring it.” He didn’t even bother acknowledging the convoluted title of the theme you made up.

“You’re not ready,” you told him matter-of-factly.

“C’mon Y/N. I can handle whatever you got.”

“Oookaaayyy,” you sang at him, knowing full well that he wasn’t ready for what you were wearing at all. 

You walked out into the entryway and immediately struck a power pose, causing your boyfriend’s breath to completely leave his body as he stared at you in shock. You were wearing an off-white two piece mini-skirt and blazer set matched with the same pair of strappy heels you wore with the last outfit. The skirt had high splits above both your legs with zippers for optional closure. The blazer also had zippers on both sides, mimicking the openings of pockets, and was held closed by a single button. The button was barely functional, and revealed almost all of what you wore underneath, which was what looked to be a zigzagged patterned, black and grey bralette.

 “Speechless aren’t you?” you asked him before giving him a turn.

He still hadn’t said anything, and continued to look you up and down from behind the camera, licking his lips hungrily at his snacc of a girlfriend.

“I saw that,” you called him out on his lechery.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said rather calmly, although, a smile could still be heard in his voice. After that, he went silent again as he went into deep thought.

“Talk!”

“B.”

“What?!” You were more than taken aback by the grade he gave you. You thought he really liked it, considering how hard he was ogling you. “Why?”

“The bra underneath kind of takes away from it,” he explained. “Maybe if you put on a plain one, it would look better.”

You looked down at the garment being addressed. “Well actually it’s a swimsuit top,” you said with a laugh and looked back up at him. “And this jacket is supposed to be worn without anything underneath.

He gasped loudly behind the camera. “So you came out here and altered the designers original vision?! B-.”

“Hey no! I had to keep it PG-13 for the camera,” you defended yourself. “I’ll show you what it’s actually supposed to look like later.”

“You can show me now. We’ll just censor it in post.”

“No, that’s too much work. You’ll just have to wait.”

“Okay, then I’ll put the camera down and follow you into the hall and we’ll just cut this part out.”

“Ugh, fine.” You gave into your boyfriend’s wishes with a huff, though you ended up keeping this part of the video anyway.

Johnny put the camera back down onto the coffee table and waited for you to call him into the hallway a few seconds later. When you were ready, he followed you into the hallway as planned, disappearing around the corner and out of the camera’s view. Since he was so far away, the camera’s microphone was barely capable of picking up what he said upon seeing the true version of your outfit, so you added a caption in post for his response.

“Smash.”

~~~

“This is the last one and the hottest of them all!” you called out to him from around the corner.

“Don’t get me excited. That last one is going to be tough to beat.”

“The theme is ‘a cosplayer who wore the design of her original character she made for her favorite JRPG to a convention and had to be escorted out of the building because she was too X-Rated for all the horny nerds to handle!’”

He laughed and shook his head at your ridiculousness. He didn’t know how much more of these crazy theme titles he could take. And this one sounded a little bit personal. “Hurry up before the battery dies--,” he started to say, but once you walked out from the hallway, his eyes almost jumped out of his head before he began to laugh hysterically. 

You were hearing another crop top, but this time it was a very, very short, hot pink crop top with long fishnet sleeves. It was meant to show a considerable amount of underboob, but to keep your video from getting age restricted, you still wore the swimsuit top you had on underneath your previous outfit. For your bottoms, you donned a pair of cut-off blue jean shorts, that were so short they might as well have been underwear because they barely covered your backside. Also, they couldn’t even close in the front. The button was just for decoration. To counteract any possible demonetization from those, you wore the matching swimsuit bottoms underneath the shorts, making sure all of your booty cheeks were properly contained. Your shoes were a pair of white gogo boots that came up just below your knees and laced up in the front. To top off the outfit, you wore a pair of blue ski goggles on your head and bright green biker gloves on your hands.

“Why?!”

“You--You--look like a hooker!” he managed to say in between fits of giggles.

“JOHNNY.”

He doubled over on the couch and clutched at his stomach. “Pass, hard pass!”

“Oh my gosh!”

“What is that?”

“This?” You pointed to the swimsuit bottoms. “Yeah, PG-13. Remember?”

“You look so ridiculous. Like you’re trying too hard or something.”

“Try to imagine it without the swimsuit.”

"Wait, wait, okay," he wheezed. "Turn around, turn around." You did as you were told, only for him to laugh harder. "No I can’t! I can’t unsee this! Y/N this is a fail!"

"A fail?!"

"The boots, Y/N! The boots!"

"I actually like the boots!"

"Not with this, Y/N!"

"But a fail, really?"

Johnny straightened up on the couch after regaining most of his composure. "Well, maybe a D since I can see what you were trying to do and maybe if you put like a regular bralette on then it wouldn’t look so bad. But those swim bottoms ruined the entire thing."

"Well, give me a second and I’ll show you how it’s supposed to look." Once again you disappeared into the hallway to take your swimsuit off and called Johnny to come look at your outfit once you were done. The captions that appeared across the screen were as follows:

"Now that’s hot."

"No touching!”

~~~

The scene opened up with the two of you back in your living room. Johnny was holding the camera above you both just like when the video first started and you were wearing your navy silk robe around your body since you were too lazy to change out of your last outfit.

“Welp, that was everything I could come up with,” you said to the camera, putting your arms around Johnny’s torso to hug him closer. “Let me know in the comments which ones were your favorites and don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already. I put a link to Johnny’s channel and links for all the items I wore today in the description.”

“Where do they even sell clothes like that?” Johnny asked you with genuine curiosity. “Where’d you get the boots?

You said the name of the store you purchased the boots from, but then you suddenly remembered something you forgot to say to your viewers at the beginning of the video. “Oh! This isn’t a sponsored video, in any way! All of the items worn today were purchased by me with my boyfriend’s credit card.”

Johnny’s face fell instantly. “Pardon?”

“Hm?” you answered him, pretending like you didn’t hear what he said.

“You bought all of this with your credit card, right?”

“What did I say?”

“You said you did it with mine.”

“Oh...yes...what I meant to say was with my……..boyfriend Johnny’s credit card!” You let go of his waist and sped away from him, zipping into the halfway at lightning speed.

“Y/N, you better be joking!” he yelled after you, but you didn’t answer him. “Y/N, I swear--”

The clipped jumped to Johnny sitting on the couch and going through his phone, checking his bank app to see if there were any recent charges to his credit card. He scrolled down a little ways and then visibly blanched once he saw the consecutive charges on his card, all in the triple digits. You had walked back into the living by then to see him react, and upon hearing you footsteps approach him, he looked up at you with eyes completely devoid of amusement.

“You’re going to wear these clothes everyday,” he chided.

“Well that benefits you, too, now doesn’t it.” Since you weren’t in the view of the camera, you took this opportunity to untie your robe and open it to show Johnny what the last outfit you had on was supposed to look like again.

Without saying a word, he looked you up and down, rolling his tongue in his cheek.

“You good?”

He silently looked you all over again and then nodded his head in affirmation. “Yeah, sure.”

“You’re welcome.”

Johnny did a double take between you and the camera’s lens before reaching over to stop the recording and turn the device off, officially ending the video.

- D