#fatws meme | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

firstelevens · 2 years

Note

#9 from the SECOND Taylor Swift prompt list for Sam/Bucky?? ⚡️⚡️⚡️

I threatened to write a Sambucky Formula One AU and then I did. Part of one, anyway. That's progress, I think.

9. a rollercoaster kind of rush

Sam holds his phone up, moving it around slowly so Sarah and the kids can get a good look at the skyline of Birnin Zana. He’s gotten used to nice hotel suites over the years, but the Wakandan ones always seem a cut above the others.

“Can we come with you next time, Uncle Sam?” asks AJ, his eyes wide as he looks out at the buildings.

Sarah shushes him. “I know you’re not asking that like Uncle Sam didn’t just take you on a very nice trip this summer.”

AJ looks like he’s about to protest, but falls silent at a nudge from Cass.

“We’ll see about next summer, okay, AJ? Take you off your mom’s hands for a bit. We can visit Warrior Falls, maybe go see the mountains up in Jabari Land. We’ll be able to do more if I don’t have a race.”

“But then Mr. Bucky won’t be–”

Cutting his little brother off, Cass leans in so his face takes up most of Sam’s screen. “I can come, too, right?”

Sam sighs. “I don’t know if you’ll like it very much, Cass…they just have that big science museum, and the botanic garden with all those rare flowers, and that one interactive geology exhibition–”

“I’m coming too!” exclaims Cass, earning a laugh from Sam and an unamused look from his mother.

Eventually, Sarah shoos the boys away to finish cleaning up their rooms, and Sam flips the camera back around. “How are you still walking around in a t-shirt?” asks Sarah, furrowing her eyebrows at him. “Don’t you have some big royal gala to attend?”

Her phone must be propped up against something now; he can see her chopping an onion as she speaks.

“I still have time,” says Sam. “Thought I’d talk to my loving family first.”

Sarah hums in acknowledgment, putting a carrot on the board and setting to slicing it before she speaks again. “How were the interviews today?”

“Not bad, actually,” he says after a moment’s thought. “I guess the team’s strategy is paying off; they actually asked me about my approach to the race today instead of whatever made up behind the scenes drama they’re usually talking about.”

He wants to warn her not to read anything on the internet, just in case, but he bites back the impulse. She knows enough by now to avoid all of that.

“I saw,” says Sarah. “The team must have been happy with that.”

“Thrilled. We were all tired of having to talk about Steve’s injury and driver chemistry, whatever that’s supposed to be. It’s a nice change.”

“And what about your cute new teammate, hm? He’s thrilled, too?”

Sam frowns, though he worries it’ll only encourage her. “Don’t call my teammate cute, Sarah.”

Sarah snorts. “I said it once, Sam. You’ve said it a hundred times.”

He scoffs. “No, I have not.”

“Oh, really?”

Sam should back down at this point, he knows, but he can’t let this go without a fight. Not this. “Yeah, really.”

“Sarah, Steve’s prettyboy teammate took the last water bottle at the press conference. Sarah, he’s lucky he’s cute ‘cause he can’t handle turns for shit,” she says, in what Sam supposes is her impression of him. “Oh, Sarah, he did an obnoxious billboard for Calvin Klein; I bet he felt like not enough people were seeing his pretty face under the helmet, but you know no one’s looking at his face in those.”

“I did not say that about his Calvin Klein billboard,” says Sam, belatedly realizing that he’s just admitted to saying the rest.

“I was paraphrasing,” Sarah says blithely. “I’m just saying, rookie Sam thought Steve’s annoying teammate was cute.”

“Well, he’s not.”

“Mmm, more of a ruggedly handsome type now, huh?”

Which is true, but Sam’s brain suddenly jumps to Bucky, bleary-eyed and messy-haired as he boards an early flight, or Bucky the way he was yesterday, when they visited a school after qualifiers and he’d sat down on the ground and rolled up his sleeve so that the kids could all get a good look at his prosthetic arm. Maybe cute is still the word for him.

Sam shakes himself before he can go too far down that road. “Sure,” he replies, as evenly as he can. “Whatever you say, Sarah.”

She looks at him like she knows what he’s not saying, but lets it slide. “I’ll let you get ready for your big party,” she says. “Have fun, Sam. And congratulations. I’m so proud of you.”

He smiles and thanks her. “Love you, Sarah.”

“Love you. Steal me something monogrammed from this fancy hotel,” she says, laughing as she hangs up.

Sam shakes his head, clicking off the screen, and makes a note to buy one of the hotel’s plush spa robes for Sarah before he leaves.

He leaves his tablet where it is and goes into the bedroom to get his outfit for the evening, turning on the TV as he goes. He may have gotten used to fancy hotel rooms a while ago, but he’ll never quite get used to the quiet of them, not after half a lifetime spent in a bustling, noisy house.

For a while, it doesn’t matter either way. The TV is drowned out by the noise of the shower and muffled by the door, but when Sam steps back into the room, the coverage has switched over to today’s race.

It’s a policy of his not to watch this stuff, but he’s busy buttoning up his shirt and trying to work in his cufflinks. The channel remains unchanged, and Sam only half-listens as they discuss track conditions and the engine issues that had taken two cars out of the race early.

It’s only when a familiar voice sounds through the speakers that he startles and looks up.

Onscreen is Bucky, his hair still matted from being under a helmet, but curling a bit at the edges as it dries. He has his eyebrows furrowed, listening intently to the question that the reporter is posing.

“Obviously, you spent much of the race neck and neck with your teammate, Sam Wilson, battling it out for fourth place after his second pit stop put him right behind you. Was it frustrating to be told to ease off and allow him to have third?”

Immediately, Sam starts looking around for the remote. He doesn’t need to hear this. Whatever it is that Bucky’s going to say, he’s heard a thousand versions of it from their rookie days. They don’t need a rehash.

He can’t find the damn thing, naturally. Sam’s on the point of trying to crouch in these very nice, extremely tailored suit pants, all just to check under the bed, but he happens to glance back at the screen for a moment and sees the look on Bucky’s face: not the cool disdain of their rookie years, or even a few months ago. He just looks mildly confused.

“Frustrating?” repeats Bucky-on-TV. “Not at all. There’s a reason they made that call. Either one of us could have made it into third from fourth, but advancing two places? That overtake on the forty-fifth lap? That’s Las Vegas in 2016, that’s Abu Dhabi in 2019, it’s Singapore last year. No one handles a street circuit like Sam does. He was the only one who could’ve made it to second.”

The interviewer goes on to ask Bucky another question, but Sam doesn’t hear it. He feels a little bit like the bottom has dropped out from under him, his jaw hanging slightly open as he stares at Bucky Barnes’ face on his TV.

It’s not like it’s out of the realm of possibility to study your competitors as a strategy. Sam’s done it, too. But Bucky had brought up races from seasons when he was still in recovery; they hadn’t even been competitors at that point. Granted, Steve had been racing against Sam in 2019, and last year, Bucky would’ve been paying attention to Singapore because he was already set to be their reserve for the next season, but it’s still a surprise somehow.

Sam doesn’t get much more time to mull it over: a knock sounds and he startles, his eyes going to Bucky-on-the-screen as he remembers who’s just outside the door. The remote is still missing, so he smacks the power button on the side of the TV as he hurries out to the front room.

He opens the door of the suite to find Peter, holding a tablet and tapping away at something onscreen. Behind him is Bucky, in shirtsleeves, his jacket probably in the suit bag that Peter has over one shoulder.

Sam is about to ask about Bucky’s state of not-quite-readiness when Peter steps out of the way to reveal Alpine curled in the crook of Bucky’s left arm, undoubtedly leaving white hairs all over his black shirt and answering Sam’s question in one fell swoop. He waves them both in, standing aside so they can enter.

It’s stupid, but as they walk into the suite, Sam tries to study Bucky’s face, like he might have missed something the last thousand times he’d looked at him.

It’s not exactly subtle. Bucky turns to look back at him, then glances down at the kitten in the crook of his arm.

“I know,” he says, apologetic. “I didn’t want her getting hair all over your stuff, but she wouldn’t let me leave.”

“Oh, I wasn’t–” Sam starts to say, then thinks about how exactly he might explain what he was doing. He shakes his head. “It’s fine; Miss Alpine is always welcome here.”

He reaches to pet her and she immediately butts her head against his hand before elegantly hopping out of Bucky’s arms. They both watch as she weaves her way around their feet before heading off and making herself comfortable on the hoodie that Sam left on the couch.

“Alpine,” Bucky says, a touch despairingly, as he huries after her. “Baby, no. Leave Sam’s stuff alone.”

“She’s fine, Bucky,” Sam says. “That hoodie’s the rattiest thing I own; honestly, I expected her to have finer taste.”

“She probably likes it ‘cause it’s soft,” says Bucky. His face does something strange for a second, and then he turns to Peter. “Alright, Parker, we’re all here. Now what?”

Peter finally looks up from his tablet, like he’s only just realized where he is. “Oh! Right! Okay, so the team wants a little more content for the Instagram page? So we’ll have the professional pictures at the gala, but they were hoping for something a little looser to tease what’s coming, so I’m just going to take some candids while you finish getting ready and you can just pretend I’m not here at all?”

It takes Sam a moment to process his words, rushed as they always are, but he nods once he gets the gist of it. “Do what you need to do, kid. Car still coming in half an hour?”

Peter nods. “We’ll be done with all this before then,” he says, already lining up a shot of Alpine making biscuits on Sam’s hoodie.

Sam looks over at Bucky, who’s already helped himself to a bottle of sparkling water and has magicked up a novel from somewhere, one of those shitty old sci-fi paperbacks. There’s a blue face on the cover, glaring red-eyed into the distance, and it looks like Bucky is already halfway through.

He turns and heads into the bedroom to finish putting in his cufflinks—Peter follows him and takes pictures—and then turns his attention to his bowtie. He gets it around his neck, then stares blankly at his own reflection. He’d been planning to break out a YouTube video so he could remember how to do this, but that feels significantly more embarrassing with Peter there waiting to capture the whole thing on camera.

He stalls for a bit by putting on his jacket and fussing with the buttons, pretending to be assessing the line of the suit. (He doesn’t need to: it’s perfectly cut and tailored, cobalt brocade with solid black lapels, and the fabric is so butter soft that Sam kind of wants to live in it forever.) After a mostly useless five minutes of stalling, he decides to head back into the sitting room, hoping that they’ll find Alpine doing something cute to distract Peter for long enough that Sam can remember how the hell you tie a bowtie.

“Better light,” he says as he heads back out, and Peter seems to accept the explanation.

Thankfully, Alpine comes through for Sam: she’s perched on Bucky’s shoulder as he reads, tucked into the crook of his neck and looking very comfortable. That has to be worth at least three or four Instagram posts, he decides, and leaves Peter to excitedly take his pictures.

Sam takes the opportunity to face himself in the mirror by the desk, determined to get this done before Peter remembers that the actual racers on the team are Sam and Bucky, and not a tiny cat with expensive taste.

He’s debating which side goes over first when he hears Bucky ask, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” says Sam, too quickly to be believable. “It’s just my bowtie, don’t worry about it.”

But Bucky is already striding over—a glance at Alpine reveals that she’s back on Sam’s hoodie—and steering Sam around to face him. “You won’t have a bowtie left if you keep pulling at it like that,” he says, but instead of cutting, it’s just kind of amused. “Here, let me.”

He waits for Sam to nod before he reaches for the bowtie, smoothing the ends out between his fingers before starting to tie it.

It’s quiet, Bucky focused on Sam’s tie and Sam left to look at the sweep of his eyelashes, the way his hair’s been slicked back, the way his shoulder and sleeve are covered in Alpine’s hair because he couldn’t bear to move her when she was comfortable. Bucky’s brow knits together in concentration and Sam feels a swoop in his stomach, a rush of- of something pounding through his veins all of a sudden.

“I’ve never once seen you in a bowtie,” says Sam, because maybe talking will help him feel steady on his feet again. “Why do you know how to do this?”

“My sister,” says Bucky. “Becca wore a tux to prom as an act of rebellion, but she said that just because she wasn’t wearing a dress, didn’t mean she would be half-assing it. Made me learn how to tie her bowtie because she couldn’t get it right when she was doing it on her own.”

The explanation does nothing to stop the swooping feeling at all. “And you still remember after all these years?”

Bucky shrugs, adjusting the ends of the tie so they sit right. “It was important to her,” he says. “And, uh, it was good practice, you know? After the arm.”

Sam doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he just nods a little and claps Bucky gently on the left arm.

He accepts that with a nod, adjusting Sam’s bowtie one last time before smoothing down his lapels. Then he takes a step back, surveying his handiwork. “Looks good,” Bucky says. “Maybe next time, I’ll ask if I can wear the blue brocade, stick you with the all-black-except-for-one-pop-of-color outfit instead.”

“You know I’d make it look good,” says Sam, grinning.

“That’s pretty confident, for a man who can’t tie a bowtie,” Bucky replies.

But Sam just waves a hand. “I have people for that.”

Bucky snorts, shaking his head. “If I’m tying your bowties on a regular basis, what exactly are you bringing to this partnership?”

“My sparkling personality,” says Sam, before reaching over to his garment bag and pulling something out. “And also, an endless supply of emergency lint rollers.”

He tosses it at Bucky, who easily catches it one handed. “Deal,” he says, already rolling it down his sleeve. “You’ve got yourself a bowtie specialist on retainer.”

“Shit, if I’d known that all it took for you to cooperate was a lint roller, I’d have given you one fifteen years ago.”

“To be fair, I don’t think me from 2009 would have had much use for a lint roller,” says Bucky.

“Oh, no, how could I forget? Walking Ed Hardy ad James Buchanan Barnes.”

“It was 2009, Sam.”

“That is not an excuse, Buck.”

“Oh, and you were so much better, with all your devastating v-necks?”

“Hey, those are a classic staple of–”

They’re still bickering when Peter tells them that the cars have arrived, but the silence when they take the elevator down is warmer, somehow. When the doors slide open, Bucky holds them for Sam, waving him forward with a small smile. “Shall we?”

At least this time, Sam’s prepared for the swoop.

#here's them as professional racers I guess happy FATWS anniversary #everybody either say thank you to or blame Emma for enabling this behavior #me 24 hours ago: I don't think I'll do another AU for a bit; let me tackle some canon verse prompts #narrator: she did not tackle some canon verse prompts #sambucky #sambucky fic #taylor swift prompt fics #my fic #zainab does ask meme things #birdhapley #sambucky f1 au

29 notes · View notes