#gonna start posting my diys on here

[i-eat-bugs-and-dirt]

New battle hat!

[killdear4]

Gouache painting I made of my cat :D

[littlegaysword]

steddie button made out of a beer cap I made back in December :)

[whileyoureinschoolidothisallday]

OKAY it has been a day of being sad and panicky. Time to move.

Yesterday, I made a post detailing the cdc announcement that there will no longer be an isolation requirement for covid. If you are one of the thousands of people rightfully raging in my notes, here's some steps to focus on.

We're not gonna give up. I've seen quite a few comments with things like 'what's the point', 'why should I even try anymore' etc etc and what we're not gonna do is give them what they want! It helps the eugenics cause to be apathetic and listless. We've made it this far, we will continue to make it. I know it's hard, but I am at least right here with you. Give yourself whatever time you need to grieve, and then I need you to get up.

If you have stopped masking for any reason, or you haven't upgraded to a respirator style mask, now is the time to change or start. From now on, we will be living in a country where you could assume there are multiple covid positive people in the room with you at all times. Surgical masks will not handle that load, and cloth masks will be even less effective at that point. Obviously, this is an unprecedented situation we're putting these masks in, and I'm not gonna sit here and pretend to be an expert that can tell you with certainty that even respirators will hold up with this amount of viral load for a long period of time, but it's the best and strongest tool we have. I'm considering using my p100 more, so that's always something to consider as well (and they make you look like a cool raver when you wear them!!!). You can buy all sorts of masks here, there's more links in the comments of my original post, and most states have their own mask blocs. To find them, go to Instagram and type "[your state] mask bloc". Here is a google doc of verified advocacy groups and mask blocs all across the country here is a diy fit test kit you can buy for $30 (unfortunately they are sold out right now. shocker.) PLEASE remember to take a layered response in these times. Masks are not the only tool in our arsenal. PLEASE for the love of God keep up with your vaccinations. Make a corsi-rosenthal box or buy a high quality air purifier if you can afford it--at the very least our homes can be safe havens (you can even put a hepa filter on your furnace!!!! And in your car too!!!!!). Use CPC Mouthwash, nasal irrigation, and nasal sprays like this one. Make it a routine: you come home, you shower, you brush your teeth, you rinse your nose, you change your clothes. And, like I said in another one of my posts, DO NOT TAKE OFF THE MASK.

3. If you would like an outlet for your rage and you're into calling your reps, feel free to calmly but firmly let the cdc have it at these numbers!!!!!

[alt text: a tweet by user silly_paulie that reads:

"Disdain for the CDC unites us all. Call today and demand isolation policies be returned to 10 days, and reducing it further to 1 day would be criminally dangerous. Call both:

404-639-7000 (press 8)

800-232-4636"

end text.]

4. If you need more outlets for your rage, I STRONGLY encourage you to get involved with your local union. Moreso than calling the CDC, tbh. I've seen multiple comments telling people just to lie about your symptoms to get more sick time off, but since there's no legal precedent to allow employees sick time for covid, all that's gonna do is get people fired. I truly believe in my lefty heart that the ONLY way we're getting anything close to mitigation is through labor rights. Even the standard for the fucking flu is 3 days, and that's nowhere near as contagious or disabling as covid. I say this as a high risk person with a neuromuscular disability: covid is an intersectional issue, but where we have the most leverage to get what we need is through labor rights.

It is NOT safe for workers to be working while ill with a Level 3 Biohazard (same as TB and the FUCKING PLAGUE. Seriously we have more regulations around fucking lice)

It is NOT safe to willfully EXPOSE your employees to a Level 3 Biohazard

It is NECESSARY for all employees to be allowed up to 10 days to recover fully from Covid-19, in order to avoid possible further injury from or hospitalization

You will NOT die or be disabled for the sake of the wealthy!!!!!

(and while you're at it, ask for better air filtration too!!!! At least 5 air changes an hour, MERV-13 air filters!! Then we won't have to constantly worry about virus bs and policy changes in the first place!!!!)

5. Closing statements. Nothing has changed with covid, this is just policy. Covid still isn't magic, she still has to get in you before she can do damage--mask up, arm your home with clean air, and don't let her. It's always worse toward the end. This is not the time to give up, it's time to dig in your heels and get to work. There are so many good things happening with covid. They are finding encouraging treatments for long covid. Finally, after years of nothing, a new prophylactic for the high risk was submitted for emergency use to the FDA, and it looks like this time it's built to last against new mutations. Covid is here to stay for the rest of our lives, but the real science hasn't given up on taking the worst of its teeth out. We WILL get to the point where the extreme fear of catching covid is nothing but a bad memory for EVERYONE. All I need you to do is commit to the belief that you're gonna survive long enough to be in that moment with the rest of us.

Now stay safe, and give em hell!!!!!

[alongtidesoflight]

okay, hear me out. no hair dye for this one maybe?

i did some painting for myself tonight and it ended up merging into a mix and match of mass effect and cyberpunk

[girlbossagenda]

HOW TO ROMANTICIZE YOUR LIFE PT.2

Here's the highly requested come backk, how to romanticize your lifeee!! Are you getting tired of the everyday life? Grab your friend, your cat and favorite snacks, it's time to add spice to your bland life!

୨୧Create a band!୨୧

Everyone wanted to be part of those cool 2000s band, like Roderick Humphrey from diaries of a Wimpy kid, so why not making friends, or become friend with the band kids!

୨୧Make your own site/blog୨୧

This is especially for my 2014 Tumblr coded girlies and the girlies that wanted to be a fashion magazine author, you just need to decide what you want to talk about! Do you want a gossip tea page? Do you want a spotted? Or a self improvement one? You decide!

୨୧Write poetry/songs୨୧

This is for my romantics out there! If you can, go in nature and write poetries or songs take a moments to yourself and express not only your feelings but also your creativity on paper throught your words.

୨୧Start a collection୨୧

Summer it's the best season to start collecting stuff, seashells, rocks, crystals, stamps, swinsuits,stickers,albums,dolls,manga,cards etc..if you ever get bored of your collection you can sell it or use it for DIYs

୨୧Trow a slumberparty/sleepover୨୧

I never went to a slumberparty, but they seem so much fun! staying awake with your friends till the first sunlights, stargazing, gossiping and crazy storytimes! They don't even have to be your friends, they can be your cousins or your siblings!

୨୧Make a mixtape୨୧

This is so old school, but it seems like a fun way to pass time, it's like making a playlist just phisycally! You can choose if you want to do it on a cd or an actual tape.

Here's the second part for my "how to romanticize your life"!! If you want you can find the first part here , as summer it's coming I'm gonna try to post more guides and answer my inbox!, stay tuned cause I'll make sure to make the most about this time and to give you more fun props! xoxo gorgeous

-𝓐

[querenciasturniolo]

hi hi, i was wondering if i could get a chris x f!reader where chris has a crush on reader and tries to impress her by dressing up as steve for halloween bc reader loves stranger things and when she finds out it’s super fluffy like they finally get together?

Tysm, I’m really excited for halloween lol 🎃

harrington ⮕ c.s.

word count: 1.2k

warnings: swearing, cheesiness

summary: request

a/n: this was so fun, i’m so PUMPED for halloween thanks to this, so thank you 🎃 not proofread btw

this is the first of MANY, i’m gonna try my best to get more and more finished and posted, but here you are 🧡

everything written is completely fictional. the people i write for are written with characteristics and mannerisms that i made for them, this is in no way depicting what would actually happen in real life.

“When are you guys getting here? The party starts in twenty minutes, and it takes half an hour to get there.”

You heard Nick groan over the receiver as you pulled the final curler from your hair and combed through it.

“We’ll be there soon, Chris just had to choose the most difficult DIY prop for his costume.” Nick said. Before you could even ask what Nick was talking about, chaos ensued. Chris and Nick bickering at each other was nothing new, but over the phone it was almost impossible to understand.

You snorted and told them you’d see them when they got there, though you knew by the time you finished your sentence that they couldn’t hear you. You dropped your phone onto your sink and took a step back, your eyes roaming over your entire outfit to make sure it looked right. You adjusted your skirt and tucked in the back of your shirt, doing a small twirl and shaking your head at how corny you are.

Nancy Wheeler, seemingly an easy character to replicate, but for some reason it still felt cheesy. You’d been a fan of Stranger Things since the first season, and you’d finally gotten over yourself enough to go as her for Halloween. Chris had pestered you to tell him what you were going as, same with Nick and Matt, but you wanted to keep it a secret to save yourself from backing out at the last second if they’d made a joke about it.

The knock on your door made you jump. You sighed and laughed quietly at yourself as you headed towards the door. Another knock sounded just as you twisted the handle.

“I’m coming, Jesus. Hold your hors—”

Your eyes went wide as you met Chris’ eyes, his own face resembling the same amount of shock as yours. Nick’s footsteps were heard coming from behind Chris, but you couldn’t pull your shocked gaze away from him.

“Are we leaving or—no fucking way. Chris, I told you!” Nick exclaimed, turning around and gesturing for Matt to come quicker. “Matt! I was right, they’re fucking matching!”

Chris was standing directly in front of you, dressed as Steve Harrington, the bat thrown over his shoulder. Your face was on fire, your heart racing as you fish-mouthed. You couldn’t possibly go to the party as Steve and Nancy, that would be insinuating that the two of you meant to do this. That would be insinuating that the two of you planned it, to go as a couple.

“I-I can change?” You said, your voice weak. Chris snapped out of his shock and looked down at you, shaking his head.

“What? No, why would you change?” He asked. You noticed the pink tinge to his cheeks almost immediately, which just made your chest ache more.

“I don’t even know.” You said honestly, Chris smiling and looking back.

“We should get going, though.” He said. You nodded and shut your door, locking it and sighing before you turned around and followed them to the car.

The drive was silent apart from the music playing moderately through the speakers. They had been your friends for ages, and the fact that you could all just sit in silence and enjoy each other’s company was perfect, in a sense. You had your feet perched up on the back of Chris’ seat, grateful your skirt was long enough to cover you and that your mother wasn’t there to tell you to sit like a lady, just scrolling through your phone. A text popped up in a banner, and you clicked on it without even seeing who sent it.

chris: you make a good nancy

You rolled your eyes and shook your head as you typed out a message.

and you make a good steve. how did you manage to hide your costume from me?

The moment the message was sent, you realized you were grinning down at your screen. You quickly schooled your features and looked out the window, watching the sun go down and the street lights glare against the glass. Your phone vibrated in your lap, and you forced yourself to wait a few moments before you picked it up.

chris: i’m stealthy, like a ninja.

A cackle bubbled out of you, your hand slapping over your mouth as your cheeks heated up. You could see Nick glance over at you from your peripheral, his eyebrows furrowed before he looked back at his own screen. You cleared your throat and sat back in your seat, dropping your feet on the floor of the car as you locked your phone and dropped it onto your lap.

The rest of the car ride was silent, your face warm and your heart pounding the moment the four of you pulled up to the party. Chris was by your side in an instant, his arm over your shoulders as the two of you walked into the slightly crowded house.

You couldn’t even remember who was throwing the party, but you were grateful that it wasn’t too crowded, and everyone was friendly. You talked to quite a few people, Chris’ arm never leaving your shoulder as the two of you passed through the house.

“You know.” You said, turning your head to face him. Chris looked down at you with raised eyebrows. “You haven’t let go of me all night.”

Chris smiled down at you and shrugged his shoulders. “I have nothing to say for myself, other than you look great and we match. What’s Steve without his Nancy?” He asked, squeezing your shoulder. You pulled away and stood in front of him, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Why did you dress as Steve?” You asked. Chris frowned at you and sputtered, shaking his head.

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I dress as Steve?” He asked his cheeks tinged red as he avoided your gaze. The look on your face when he finally met your eyes again made him sigh and he shrugged.

“God it’s so cheesy, bare with me.” He said. You nodded, waiting patiently for him to go on with a growing smile on your face. “I’ve like, been into you for a while now. And I thought if I went as Steve for Halloween, you’d be impressed. It’s totally fine if you don’t feel the same way, obviously. I just, I don’t even know what I was thinking, actually. Forget I said anyth—”

You rested your hand over his mouth, his eyebrows shooting up as you pulled it away when he stopped talking.

“That was so incredibly fucked up, are you serious?” He asked, a soft laugh leaving your lips as you shook your head and smiled up at him.

“How else was I supposed to get you to shut up long enough for me to say I do feel the same?” You asked, Chris’ shocked face morphing into a fond, shy smile.

“Really?” He asked, his hands coming up from his sides to rest on your waist. You practically beamed at him as you nodded and leaned up on your tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. You dropped back down on your heels and took a step back, his hands dropping back to his sides as he looked at you with wide eyes.

“Really. Now, ready to get back to the party?” You asked, turning and walking away. He was soon right by your side, his hand entwining with yours as he tossed the bat over his shoulder.

“I was born ready, Wheeler.”

tags: @strniolo , @toyourloves , @ssturniolo , @jellybeanbby , @thetriplets3 , @mxriverse , @stvrni0lo , @gabbylovesreading , @dwntwn-strnlo , @tylerscreat0r , @emmssturniolo , @lvrsparadise , @tuktuk34 , @angelcake-222 , @20nugs , @obsessivencrazy , @lollibumblebee

[xanderisbraindead]

I see people that are tryna get into emo and scene fashion make posts ab like needing help finding clothes or like styling their hair n the liek so I’m here to help. Who am I? Nobody but im like scenemo and very happy to help. Im gonna make a resource masterlist, starting with this post

It’s important to note that if you have the hair, anything you wear will look emo. Emo teens would really just wear just some normal clothing and it fucked! Keep that in mind

How do I find emo/scene clothes?

🇺🇸🇬🇧Check resale sites like depop, ebay, mercari, poshmark (mercari is not available in the uk). You CANNOT build a wardrobe overnight. You just cant. Be patient and just keep checking, I promise you will find something. Heres some things I’ve personally bought or found on these sites and the price usd just for reference (without shipping)// Beetlejuice striped ht skinnies $16.49// We the kings shirt $5.50// All time low shirt $5.50//Red plaid ht skinnies $10.50// Famous star and stripe shirt $5-10// Secondhand serenade shirt $10// A lot of fellow scene and emo ppl resell on these sites!! (Trashmob has a depop for example, so does oliver sykes???)

2-Thrifting. Ik you’re probably tired of hearing it bc duh but… =) Try some local thrifts, big companies either suck, are expensive or both. I’d buy my skinnies from here. Reminder that they don’t have to be black!! You can style black, white, blue, any color of jean. Even styles like flair or bootcut jeans.

🇺🇸HT REPLAY. NOBODY TALKS AB THIS. Hot topic has a thredup, they sell preloved clothing and its constantly updated. Its very discounted. For example a shirt that was initially $25 usd would be sold for $11-9 usd. This is as far as ik only in the us??

Diy, obv. Look at those. Aren’t they cool looking? Not being able to afford band merch doesn’t make you any less of a fan than ppl with huge collections, remember that.

🇺🇸🇬🇧Dont be afraid to check normal stores like target, tk maxx, and walmart, you’ll be surprised. Target has cute character jackets if you can fit kids sizes and walmart made that skeleton sweater vest they gotta have more up their sleeves.

🇺🇸Merchnow.com. They have HEAVENLY old band merch and posters. Like ptv, chiodos, sws, tdwp, coheed and cambria, before today, texas in july, even like icp. this might be a us only thing? If someone could check for me ilys

(Added on Nov 8 23)

🇬🇧Grindstore.com they’re like merchnow kinda, heavenly band merch

(Added April 29 24)

🇺🇸🇬🇧 Childrens clothes if you can fit into them a lot of childrens clothing are very good for a scene look

This is all I have for now, but if i come up with anything else I’ll definitely update this!!

[l223m0nade]

Bees (a stucky au snzfic)

ok

ok ok

so I saw this random thing on a tumblr post:

and it got its Stucky-idea hooks so deep in my brain. It just did. And the thing is my deepest inspo is honestly in the land of snz. (This fic kind of ends abruptly sorry but i want to do more and it'll probably end up on Ao3 w like a M or E rating 😳🫣 when and if that happens i'll link to it)

Stucky au, no powers, age gap, what I'm picturing in my head goes less with the words "silver fox Steve" and more with the words "dorky Dilf Steve" like 2012 Cap fashion with current Chris Evans face? in..a good way? and longhair early-20s burnout Bucky. I have some backstory headcanons that are just hinted at here, hopefully it's tantalizing rather than confusing.

anyway have 11.5k words of this and encourage me to write more bc i have fallen in love with these particular boyz. Some light existential angst but mainly idiots pining aka the sweetest sauce

~Fic~

Sam isn’t sure how much longer he can allow this to go on. His barback and the new semi-regular square dude are once again being all awkwardly flirty while pretending they’re not, like two sad lonely white...ducks, who never learned a mating dance and have zero game.

At least Square Dude has an excuse: he’s the most obvious newly-divorced newly-out family-type guy Sam’s ever seen. He’s clean-cut, with a ridiculously handsome square jaw, wearing well-made but unstylish button-down shirts and pants that make him look like he belongs in a Norman Rockwell painting. He started coming in about two months ago, quiet, friendly when ordering his one or two beers of the evening, and firmly shy when it comes to the inevitable overtures sent his way. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is him dipping a first toe into the pool: coming to a relatively quiet gay bar, just to sit and watch men talk to each other and let the whole notion sink in.

By now most guys would’ve found someone to spread their wings with or gone elsewhere to find em, but Square Dude, whose name is Steve, seems content to talk to the guy who pours his beer about whatever DIY project Bucky is pulling questions out of his ass about.

The crush is painfully obvious, and suburban closeted Steve can’t be blamed for having no deal-sealing abilities, but Bucky has no such excuse. Sam has watched him pull stiff-backed business bros in five minutes flat when the mood struck him, with his big blue puppy eyes and his dark wicked smirk and long lean slouch. But with Steve all he appears capable of doing is asking him questions about crown molding as though those words mean anything to him while gazing at him like he’s beaming the words You could fix me directly into Steve’s skull. Steve, for his part, just doesn’t seem to be able to look anywhere other than Bucky.

As usual, anyone that tries to strike anything beyond a friendly conversation is kindly but firmly rebuffed. “He’s not ready for that yet,” Bucky had insisted with unnecessary defensiveness when Sam implied it was time for the new guy to move from spectating to participating in the relatively mellow flirting and hookup scene the bar played host to most evenings. “People go at their own pace.”

“The only pace he’s going at is towards you,” Sam smirked. Bucky glowered at his implication. “You gotta make it weird. He comes here to, like, practice. I’m part of that, in a chill, friendly way.” He shrugged and looked at the glass he was drying. “When he is ready, it’s not gonna be for me, it’s gonna be for someone actually in his league, like a...hot college professor, or something.” Sam had rolled his eyes and resolved to stop trying to help Bucky Barnes flail around in his mess of a love life anymore, for the hundredth or so time.

Tonight is busy enough that Sam can mostly be distracted from this bad sitcom, and not so busy that he has to yell at Barnes for being distracted. Still, there are a couple empties on tables in the Steve-less side of the bar, and after finishing the drinks for the people in front of him he turns, catching Bucky’s voice, in a tone of delight he uses when speaking with only one person, saying “Wait. Seriously? Bees?”

“Yeah!” Steve responds, equally puppyish. He’s tall and broad, sandy hair and beard just beginning to show a hint of salt-and-pepper. He looks like anyone’s fantasy fireman or lumberjack, at least in the context of a place like this. He also exudes genuine sweetness and vulnerability despite his intimidating muscled height.

Bucky Barnes, Sam’s barback and old friend, leans against the bar doing the helpless-goober-with-a-crush stare, a look on his face like Steve just announced he was a Nobel Prize winner. “No way. How do you keep bees? Just as, what, a casual hobby? That’s, like, a whole thing, you can’t be an expert in so many things!”

Bucky is all shaggy longish dark hair and stupid cheap graphic t-shirts, with a striking, animated face that is used mainly for sarcasm. He and Sam had been at the same high school a few blocks away, though Sam is older, and in the funny way of life they’ve wound up good friends. He’s working at Sam’s place because, in his words, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing with his life. Bucky’s going through his own version of one of those fairly bleak lost periods of 20-something misery, but he’s smart and not a drunk and decent at what he does for Sam, and if he bangs a third of the customers he does it discreetly enough. Sam never knew dark-blond, broad-shouldered, bass-voice sad-eyed dudes pushing 40 were the kryptonite that made him unable to do anything including flirt, until Steve came in one day and Bucky sprayed himself with the keg he was tapping.

Steve chuckles— is this man blushing? “Oh no, I’m nowhere near an expert. But it’s pretty easy once they get established. Don’t need much from you. I’m not, uh, living at the place with the backyard where the hives are, right now….so….but they’ll be fine without me.”

Steve gets a little quiet and Bucky’s fangirl expression dims with distressed sympathy. It gets sad like this sometimes when talking to Steve. Recently divorced guys had this problem, where everything came back to the one topic. Steve’s not doing it pathologically, didn’t seem like, just genuinely realizing another change. Bucky looks stricken. He doesn’t always seem young, at newly 24, but sometimes it still shows.

Sam finally manages to catch his eye away from gazing at Steve to convey a quick head jerk of get-the-hell-over-there-and-do-the-job-I-pay-you-for, and Bucky peels himself away with an apologetic smile at Steve. Sam picks up the conversation with Steve as Bucky clears tables at top speed, hearing how he’s renting a place month-to-month not far away, not able to plan something more permanent just yet. He doesn’t say anything revealing, but it’s still easy to paint a picture of a small, empty apartment. Bucky’s not the only one with a soft spot for this guy, and Sam is warmed by the thought that his little bar offers him respite.

………………..

“That’s so sad,” moans Bucky a few days later. It’s just after opening on a weekday afternoon, and Bucky seemed quieter than usual so Sam is tantalizing him with what he learned talking to Steve the other day. “Did he say—you know he has kids?”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam answers. He’d been as offhand as a person could be about that sort of thing, but it wasn’t hard to see how he really felt. He was standing in the rubble of a sincere loving marriage to a woman with whom he had two 11-year old twins. Helped explain his rectitude when it came from moving from his spot at the bar, meeting someone other than the staff. Bucky’s eyes are pools of sympathetic anguish and Sam feels the need to say, “This kinda stuff happens to people, Buck,” earning an eye-roll for his patronizing efforts. “It’s good he’s coming here, learning about himself. I think you help a lot, for the record.”

Bucky starts and gives him a bewildered look. “What?”

This is aging him. Sam sighs, “He’s lonely. Maybe feels kinda lost right now.”

Bucky’s mouth gets a pained downward slant to it.

“He. Likes. You.”

At that, of course, Bucky gets uncomfortable, blushing and moving off to wipe tables somewhere away from Sam, rubbing his nose and clearing his throat like he’s been doing since he got there. He brightens when Steve comes in an hour later, and Sam rolls his eyes and leaves them to their game of mouse-and-mouse.

Steve is telling Bucky... how window insulation works. He thinks he asked, he hopes to god he did, at least. He’s been embarrassing himself for weeks, coming to this place almost every day. He’s kept it pretty well under wraps that although he liked the neighborhood simplicity, and talking to Sam, and got comfortable after the first few visits, the real reason he’s there more evenings than not is to see Bucky. With his bright grey-blue eyes and dark hair hanging past his chin, swinging against his cheekbones, with his smile and wicked sense of humor and his confounding ease in himself, the ease that gives Steve despair and hope for himself. With that mouth and that divot in his chin, and those last two thoughts are not allowed, because the need to put his thumb into that dot in his sculpted chin and kiss those ridiculously pink lips is urgent and unthinkable.

He doesn’t do that, he just sits and pines and chats awkwardly with him, and gets to know a few other regular guys and talks sports with Sam. He just likes talking to Bucky, it’s easy, easy like nothing has been in a long time, and he’s a creep, he’s a pathetic older guy using his experience to take advantage of a younger guy—

Only, he’s not actually experienced here, at all. And Bucky is so smart, he’s self-deprecating about it but it’s not like he and Steve aren’t generally on the same level beyond his inner glossary of home improvement terminology. He downplays the fact that he knows cars like an expert, insists the stuff Steve learned from keeping up an old house and the hobbies he picked up to stay sane is somehow far more impressive— Steve’s pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose, to make him feel less adrift and clueless. He has that way about him, of someone who looks after other people without realizing it.

Things were all dark there for a while, with the end of his marriage to Peggy. But he’s pretty sure he and Bucky are friends, and he feels bright when he sees him.

Tonight, though, Bucky seems just a little worn down. He’s wearing a waffle-knit shirt under his incomprehensible-thorny-calligraphy-t-shirt, as though he’s cold, and his eyes are tired. Steve waits for a reply to the last thing he said and looks to see Bucky with a dazed, spaced-out expression, before he shakes his head and rubs his nose, saying “Sorry, I thought I was gonna sneeze, what’d you say?”

Talking about the goddamn weather and window insulation was segueing into a real conversation, to Steve’s delight: “How my mom moved us out to Jersey so we could live somewhere better and I never forgave her.” Bucky gives a wide-eyed grimace of agreement and he can’t help the bright laugh that bursts out of him. “How about you, you grow up in the city?” He’d inadvertently spilled his guts about the divorce on like his third time in the bar, something that humiliated him to think of but Sam had simply said with an understanding face wasn’t too unusual, so Bucky knew the basics about Peggy and the twins, but Steve had felt clumsy asking Bucky about himself.

He rolled his eyes with his problematically attractive crooked grin and answered, “Aw man, I grew up practically around the block from this place. Went to high school at the big catholic cinderblock in the neighborhood. I was at school on the west coast for a couple years, but…” His eyes cast downward. “now I’m back.”

Steve remembers how bad it felt at that age, to not have accomplished enough fast enough. Saying that will make him sound like an old grey dad and even if that’s what he is he can still hold out a little hope of being something different here, so he just says, “Brooklyn’s a good hometown to come back to.”

That makes Bucky smile at him and look him in the eye, like he liked what Steve said, even like it made him feel better. Steve tamps his answering grin down to reasonable levels.

Bucky’s also been rubbing at his nose on and off this whole time, and he can see it give a little twitch right before he breathes out a “scuse-me” through hitching breaths, his eyes flickering closed. He pushes his nose firmly into his long-sleeved elbow. “hhh-hh-tdschuh!” He sneezes quietly and muffled. “Oh, snf, sorry,” he says, blinking and emerging from his elbow but not lowering it, the hazy ticklish look still on his face, breaths hitching. “Another—hhh—‘nother one?” He freezes, looking up at the overhead lights, nostrils flared, but after a second he deflates with a sigh. “Nope, nevermind. Snff.” Steve’s guts swoop. This crush is so unsustainable. He’s gonna fail to be cool and friendly and he’ll have to watch Bucky go all uncomfortable and pitying as he explains to Steve that he has six hot boyfriends who are not almost-forty almost-virgin losers who only know how to take up his time when he’s trying to work. According to his therapist these “harangues of negativity” are “unhelpful.” But Bucky looks tired and a little pale and like his nose is going to start turning pink and Steve is just trying to survive.

“Bless you,” Steve says softly in his gentle voice that’s so deep it takes Bucky by surprise and makes his stomach flutter every time he talks to him. He feels like he might be blushing.

“Thanks,” it comes out husky and he clears his throat hard, moving to the little sink to wash his hands.

“Allergies, or…?” Steve ventures, a little divot between his eyebrows of concern-more-like-pity.

“I dunno, something’s bothering my nose today,” he says lightly with a shrug. In truth Bucky has a good idea what’s making him sneeze. The fucking radiator that was supposed to heat his cheap shitty basement apartment had stopped working in the middle of the night, so he’d spent six hours until dawn shivering, and an itchy tickly feeling had been growing in the back of his nose and throat since around noon. It’s starting to evolve into a runny nose and an ever-present but elusive feeling of being about to sneeze, and he knows that means he’s coming down with a cold.

He sees some convenient glasses to clear and excuses himself with a smile so he can sniffle out of Steve’s earshot; he’s enough of a mess compared to Steve on his best day, he doesn’t need to show off his scraggly urchin runny nose aesthetic of tonight any more than he has to.

For the next hour, these light, tickly sneezes either sneak up on him or abandon him at the last minute, leaving his nose feeling like it’s going to start getting stuffy.

Steve watches Bucky do his job, sniffling, rubbing his nose, and sneezing furtively into his sleeve or collar; tucking the strands of hair that have come loose from his short ponytail behind his ears, and feels so helplessly tender for him that it can’t be normal or healthy even by desperate crush standards.

Bucky’s coming down with a cold. He seems to want to brush it off, but Steve can hear a slight change in the resonance of his voice that gives it away even if the tired pink starting to border his eyes and nostrils doesn’t. The place is getting crowded and he’s busy; Steve feels for him, as well as pathetically jealous of his attention as he banters with him in passing once in a while.

He glances up as Bucky heads in his direction with a short stack of empty glasses and sees his steps slow; he pauses, blinks up at the overhead light, eyes hazy, and then, wavering, starts to turn his face into his shoulder, before pausing again and then sighing and sniffing as the sneeze evaporates. He looks up and sees Steve watching him like a creep and laughs, “Damn, lost her,” and then as he continues behind the bar, “You havin’ fun watching me look stupid?”

“It’s agony actually,” he responds, gets a laugh, and feels the now-somewhat-familiar internal squeal of this is flirting! I’m flirting with a guy and I think he can tell! It’s painfully pathetic, but he can’t help but track the fact that Bucky knows plenty of the folks that come to Sam’s, that he’ll give anyone his attention if they ask for it, smiling and joking, but the only person he really goes out of his way to talk to, initiates teasing with, is him, Steve. It’s still nothing more than polite obligatory chatting, he’s sure— when you work at a bar this kinda thing is natural. Bucky is young and charismatic and gorgeous. His love life would probably give Steve enough combined envy and jealousy to cause heart failure, which would be perfectly appropriate because he is an old square divorcee. It makes him warm and bubbly enough that he seems to be Bucky’s favorite customer to pass the time with.

A guy down the bar gets his beer from Sam and sidles closer. “This seat taken?” he asks with a good-humored cocked eyebrow. This is why Steve actually started coming to this place: to meet people, to meet guys, in a way that, well, went somewhere. To call his own decades-old bluff. Not to moon over staff half his age who woulda been out of his league even if he was still in his twenties. He turns to the guy—his age or a few years older, attractively lithe with muscle, a hard but handsome face, and smiles.

Bucky gets busy for a stretch— Sam’s place is actually full tonight thanks to the playoff game. He enjoys the feeling of being a genuinely necessary part of the bar’s operation, when some nights it’s hard to believe he’s more than Sam’s charity case. Nights like this remind him that he has a real job, he’s decent at it even with a bum left arm; whether he’s living out his dreams or not he’s an adult with a job, a place to live, and people he cares about. Plus it distracts him from feeling sorry for himself for coming down sick.

His satisfied feelings fade when he looks over to the Steve end of the bar and sees Brock Rumlow talking to him. He scowls. Fucking Rumlow. He only ever comes on nights with games these days, but Bucky would be perfectly happy if he never came in at all.

It’s fine. Steve’s fine. He is a grown-up, significantly more of one than Bucky. Of all the people who have no need of his misplaced ineffectual chivalry, Steve has got to be last in line.

Maybe he finds more stuff to do in the general area of that end of the bar, and maybe he’s listening for Rumlow to say something dickish, or maybe he’s just a masochist and he wants to know firsthand if they hit it off. Sam is trying to point his “Don’t-be-Stupid” face at him like a flashlight beam but he resolutely ignores it while he replaces a couple bottles that legitimately needed it, ok, just because they’re in a convenient place doesn’t make that untrue.

“Yeah, I’m glad I found this place,” he catches Steve’s cheerful voice. A wave of bar noise obscures their next words, and then he makes out Rumlow,

“—actual sports on the TV. ‘Course,” the smile is audible in his voice, “the clubby places are good for at least one reason, y’know?” He quiets down to say it but not enough. Steve wouldn’t particularly like that, Bucky guesses, and then grinds his teeth as his brain helpfully supplies him with the memories of how easily Brock had charmed him, months ago. It wasn’t any kind of nightmare, but it was still probably his least favorite hookup to date: he’d been so happily focused on Bucky at first, then rough and selfish in bed, capped off by an unnecessarily clear implication that he wouldn’t be calling. Bucky knew the score with casual sex, but it had still given him enough whiplash to sting; it crossed his mind a few days later that it had been like Rumlow wanted him to feel like a dumb kid.

Steve has sputtered something about “not sure he’s looking for anything like that” while Bucky fumed about the past. He has to grab beers for a couple guys, and bending to get in the lowboy fridge makes his nose run suddenly, and flush with an insistent tickle. He manages, just barely, to squash the sneeze completely into a silent mmp! into his shoulder, andmakes a getaway to the bathroom. He blows his nose, but it won’t stop tickling, so then he stands there like an idiot, holding paper towels like they’re a book he’s reading, staring up into the lights and waiting to coax the sneeze out.

He can feel it coming but it still takes forever. At least the bathroom is empty. He wrinkles his nose exaggeratedly and sniffs and his breath finally starts to catch.

“hehh...heh...heh—heh-Uhh....huhh. Fuck.” There’s no way it’s not happening though, his goddamn nose tickles so bad— “hhHAh—EHSsschhooo!” It’s a ridiculous cartoony sneeze but at least it’s satisfying. He blows his nose again, then sighs. He’s definitely sick. Gonna be great sleeping in a freezing apartment. Turning into kind of a shitty night, he thinks with sarcastic pep.

When he leaves the restroom he can’t help glancing over to where Steve sits, and sees he’s now frowning at whatever Rumlow’s saying, looking politely uncomfortable on the way to annoyed. As he drifts back into earshot he hears, “….fun, but, if you’re looking for more than, um, casual, I dunno, kind of a dead end.” Then his pulse jumps as Rumlow looks right at him and finishes, “not dating material, trust me. Either way,” he leans in, “I think you can do better.”

Bucky closes the distance but puts himself behind the bar so he doesn’t immediately clock the asshole. His fists are clenched. Can he throw him out? If he doesn’t get away from Steve and shut up Bucky’s gonna end up fired and charged with assault, probably, but he doesn’t know if he can throw someone out on the grounds of being a jerk that he hates. Thank God, Sam’s caught on that something is up.

Rumlow doesn’t seem to have won Steve over, in any case. He’s turned cold and hard in a way that makes him look unfamiliar, and he says quietly but very clearly, “I think you’ve got the wrong idea.” He sounds like a straight Army Captain contemptuously shattering an underling’s heart immediately post-office-suckjob or something; in the morass of anger and panic it still registers with Bucky’s dick to his utter bewilderment. It definitely triggers some core memory for Rumlow, who turns the color of old milk before flushing and standing. He takes in the sight of Bucky glowering behind Steve and barks an ugly laugh. “It’s like that, huh?” he asks, shaking his head in mock pity. “Good luck with that rescue mission.”

Bucky feels like he did when Hank Ackerman pantsed him in 8th grade. Everything’s too bright and clear. He wants to cover his face and run into the back, but he’s rooted to the spot by the thought that that’s just what the dumb baby slut Rumlow’s been making him out to be would do.

“That’s it man,” Sam comes up beside him, smile on his face as though he’s just casually joining their conversation. “You’re done. Get outta here.”

Rumlow scoffs, takes a step towards the door, then turns with the beginning of a macho intimidation-lean in Sam’s direction. He’s hammered, Bucky hadn’t realized, and he can usually tell with people. He’s...kind of fucking scary. Had he gotten rougher around the edges, or had he been like this when Bucky went home with him? Jesus Christ.

Sam just returns his stare, all semblance of friendliness gone from his face. “Get out.”

Rumlow glares another second, but then he goes. There’s a reason Sam’s successful running a bar in the middle of the still-managing-to-be-seedy part of Brooklyn, as well as his finely tuned sensibilities to the unmet needs of Brooklyn’s grownup queer folks. He has the air, recognizable to serious troublemakers, of someone who will absolutely meet and raise any escalation. There were, in fact, a taser and a gun behind the bar, but Sam had never had to use them.

Steve stands up sharply, like he’s—what, gonna follow? Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but then—“Steve.” Sam’s got the side bar entry folded up and he’s intercepting his angry stride. “Please don’t.” He goes on, too quiet for Bucky to make out. Steve deflates and sits back down, taking a long drink of beer and then frowning at his knees.

Bucky consciously lets go of his tension as he sees Rumlow’s silhouette, walking outside, disappear from the last window on the right. He feels shaky, the way any kind of confrontation leaves him, and embarrassed as hell. He avoids Steve’s eyes for all he’s worth, scrubbing a hand under his nose and sniffing sharply.

Steve was just a customer. Bucky was just one of many people that Steve made polite conversation with in the course of a day. Feeling like this was just a consequence of getting that confused. Because he’s an idiot. He has to sniffle again. He also feels about ten times sicker than he did a few minutes ago, and successfully blinking away the brief prickle in his eyes just turns it into the need to sneeze.

Steve tries to breathe smoothly and calm down. This frat-boy rage is ridiculous, he still wants to go punch the hell out of that fucking creep. He must be drunker than he realizes, although deep down he knows it has more to do with the inarticulate surge of protectiveness he’d felt for Bucky since the guy had gestured to him with a jerk of his head as he crossed the room.

He hears a shuddering gasp and sees Bucky duck down to crouch behind the bar. His concern flares way up, but then he hears the three muffled sneezes, all in a rush, “hhhMPtchsh—hmptsschoo—hptsshhuh,”. He straightens back up, sniffing hard, more wetly than he sounded earlier. He’s rubbing his nose and glaring at the door, not looking at Steve.

“Bucky,” he says, frowning, determined to get this across, “what that asshole said about you—”

“Steve, snff, it’s fine, just drop it, okay, I’m asking you,” he meets Steve’s eyes with a downcast expression, before it flickers as his breath catches, and he sneezes again, half-pinched down into the collar of his shirt, “ihh-dtsschuh!”

His nostrils keep quivering and he lets out a shaky sigh of frustration before ducking around the corner out of sight with his hands tented over his nose and sneezing, “hiih-hih-HIDtschoo!...hih-HIH-TISchoo! ..heehh...heh—HEH—” the last one deserts him and leaves him sniffling. They’re still pretty quiet, but a lot heavier and spraying than the first sneezes Steve heard earlier. Bucky blows his nose and washes his hands thoroughly, and when he’s back behind the bar his nose is decidedly pink.

“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky’s lips thin in exasperation— it’s not like him, compared to the guy Steve’s talked to the last few weeks. Whatever, he can’t help but say, “you do sound like you’re coming down with something, you should—”

“Steve, I’m fine,” says Bucky, in a soft tone that brooks no argument. Still tense, he turns to Steve with a crooked smile and says, “Really,” and it’s warm, if strained, between them again, and it seems like that’ll just have to satisfy Steve, and he says as much to Bucky who blushes and bites his lip for some reason.

Sam rescues Bucky by asking him to do inventory in back, letting him be sneeze and be dramatically in his feels without anyone around, especially Steve. The bar is slow enough now that he just shamelessly hides for the rest of the night. He’s constantly sniffling and sneezing and needing to blow his nose with the roll of rough brown paper towels back there, and even without that he’s too keyed up and pissed and miserable for human company, so it’s for the best.

He casts furtive recon glances to the bar where Steve sits, first craning his neck trying to spy Bucky, then brooding into his beer glass which makes Bucky feel like an asshole, then perking up at least a little shooting the shit with Sam, hopefully talking shit about Brock Dickface Rumlow. Then the misery wells up enough to get him to actually focus on work to avoid feeling it, and then it’s a few hours later and they’re closing up and he goes home to his little icebox and tires not to think about anything.

The next day, Sam chooses evil.

Steve and JB Barnes are both at least somewhat complex men, and it is always a bad idea to meddle in the affairs of others. But screw it, he’s had Bucky moaning in his ear for months now, and he was gonna have to recheck all his angry counting from last night, and these guys really seemed dumb enough to let the tension of mutual attraction strain between them until it just broke, some misunderstanding threw them both on the defensive or whatever, and they missed the chance at any of the fun part of connecting with each other.

So.

It isn’t a big surprise when Bucky calls him around 2, apologizing and pausing to make some gross “ihHgjshuhh!” noise, saying he was probably too sick with this cold to come in. What is a surprise, for poor Bucky, is Sam’s implacable response: “Duuude, I’m so sorry, but there’s some kinda convention in town and the place is packed, I need you here so bad, no matter what. You can take the next two days off, I’ll pay you.” He hears Bucky swallow back the what the hell and resignedly say ok. He feels diabolical. But hopefully it will be worth it. Steve usually comes in early on Thursdays, and he’d looked all hangdog-worried about Bucky the night before.

He’s been there twenty minutes already, chatting distractedly with Sam and staring at the TV screens but really looking all over the room like Bucky might be hiding somewhere. Bucky slouches in, ten minutes late, takes in the mostly empty room and gives Sam a betrayed glare.

“You really ndeeded mbe, huh,” he mutters as he puts his backpack away.

“You don’t even sound that bad,” Sam rejoins cheerfully, and Bucky’s mouth drops open with incredulity.

He moves some boxes around in back without issue. Then he tries to start prep by the bar. In a fifteen-minute period he has two sneezing fits that require him retreating to the bathroom to blow his nose endlessly and wash his hands. Sam decides that’s plenty sufficient. He and his customers are gonna pay a price in germ exposure for this stupid ass cupid skit he’s putting on.

“Steve, you believe this guy?” Bucky’s been avoiding Steve’s concerned hopeful looks since he got here. “He insisted on coming to work.” Bucky chokes in outrage, then coughs for real, while Steve moves a few seats closer. Sam turns; Bucky couldn’t look more betrayed if there was a knife with Sam’s name on it in his guts. Lord deliver him from dramatic white boys. “Did you take the bus here, Buck?” There was no other way for the guy to get to work, but he just replies flatly,

“Yeah.”

“You oughtta go home and rest.”

“Le me give you a ride, Buck,” Steve jumps in with the Air-Bud eagerness Sam had expected. They confirm it and bustle Barnes into a Civic while he’s sneezing too much to protest. Sam washes his hands metaphorically of the situation, and also very literally and thoroughly.

Steve’s car is a little old, and cold, and dusty. Bucky shivers as he buckles his seatbelt. He feels silently nervous and thrilled to be in Steve’s Car!!, but at the moment it’s hard to be anything but….sneezy…

“hhh-hh-hhmmPtchuh! S-s-sor-ry-hiihHIptchsh!” Holding them back when he feels like this just makes his nose more irritated and thus even sneezier. He stubbornly jams his fist under his nose to quell the tickle. He has some napkins from work, so a nose-blow is possible, but it doesn’t feel possible, not so close to Steve, who has it a million times more together than Bucky even on days when he isn’t falling apart on a cellular level.

“Bless you,” Steve says quietly. He looks at him reflexively, to see a small, sweet, sympathetic smile. “Ready?” Bucky gives a little nod and the car pulls out into the slushy road.

His nose is running onto his finger, it’s a crisis. This is why it’s always a terrible idea to leave the house when you’re really sick. “Ugh, I gotta blow mby ndose, I’mb sorry, I’mb so gross right ndow,” talking also makes his nose angry. Fucking Sam and his supervillain plan to humiliate him. What had he done to deserve this? He fumbles for the napkins with his less-dextrous left hand, the one he should have stuck under his nose, goddamnit, he’s gonna sneeze again…

“Psh, don’t worry about it,” scoffs Steve like the big huge dad he is, then with a sympathetic glance he turns the radio on, to the classic rock station, because of course, Bucky almost laughs even while racing to get tissues on his face before this giant wet sneeze overcomes him. The music is loud and it does help him feel less embarrassed.

“heh—HEH-KSSSHOOoo!” he gets the wad of napkins in front of him just in time. Blowing his nose after that demolishes them, but he feels a little closer to a human being.

“Bless you!” Steve chuckles. “Man you got a good bug, jeez!”

Why are he and Sam both so cheerful. “Thanks, I’mb glad you’re impressed,” he croaks.

“You have cold stuff at home?” Huh? When Bucky doesn’t answer he continues, “Tissues, tea, soup, medicine, you know?”

“Oh, umb, sorry, I’m tired,” Steve makes a sympathetic sound. “I usually just use toilet paper. I took the last of my Dayquil before work. I dunno if it even helped, all it feels like it did is mbake me jittery and sdeezy.”

“Why don’t we stop by a drugstore.” He sounded decisive.

“Oh, you don’t have to bother with that, really Steve—” he pauses to sniffle desperately. Technically he can afford a couple things, and he probably needs them. “Or—you could drop me off and I’ll get myself home from the store, that would totally be a big help—”

“Is the heat even on in your place?” Steve interrupts, shrewd-eyed. At Bucky’s wide-eyed sputtering response he continues, “I knew it. I used to be a broke Brooklyn kid, once upon a time. Only reason to come into work, am I right? Can’t believe landlords are still getting away with this shit.”

Bucky considers denial, then slumps. “S’why I’mb so much...hhh...worse...hh-huh-hudschuh! Snff-snff. Worse today. They said it’ll be fixed by tomorrow so...we’ll see, ha. I got a space heater and an electric kettle though, I can get in my blankets and drink tea and I’m fine.”

Steve is quiet, no response, and Bucky worries irrationally that he pissed him off. A few minutes of classic rock later, he pulls into the small parking lot attached to the drugstore, turns the car off, and turns to him, looking a little uncomfortable.

“Bucky I—” he breaks off and laughs to himself. “I know you have to be polite to customers, I don’t want to—” he makes eye contact, looking pained and rueful. “I’d like to think we’re friends. But I don’t want to put you on the spot or anything,”

“We’re friends,” Bucky interrupts gently. Steve’s face brightens like a sunrise and Bucky’s chest does a nice warm thing.

“Yeah? That’s...I’m real happy to hear it.” Steve says, sheepish but grinning. Then his eyes get the determined look that Bucky is starting to think means trouble. “Well the reason I asked is, as a friend, I really hate the idea of you trying to ride this out in an icebox apartment. I have heat. And a couch!” He hastens to add at whatever wide-eyed look Bucky’s giving him. “It’s just, I know it’s no fun being sick by yourself, and, well, honestly I wish I’d socked that asshole at the bar last night, and I really wish I’d clocked him as a jerk faster, and I’d feel a lot better if I could do something nice for you, and you really seem like you could do with some rest and medicine. Will you let me grab some stuff here and spend the night at my place—where there’s heat— and let me fuss over you?”

“Steve, that’s—that’s so nice, but I really can’t imb—snff—impose on you, and I gotta be so contagious right now…”

“I don’t care about that,” Steve says easily. “And I know you’re not gonna die on your own, but,” and, whoa, he’s deploying some kind of dignified mature version of puppy-dog eyes, it’s so sincere, and also so certain, that it starts to seem like the only sensible course of action is to let his gorgeous crush take him to his apartment while he’s the polar opposite of sexy, an unspeakable snot factory, and also possibly starting to run a fever.

….His apartment is gonna be so goddamn cold.

And lonely, incidentally.

And Steve is so nice. He’s literally, actually here, he seems to mean it that he wants to take care of Bucky’s sick bedraggled ass as some kind of friend-favor. There’s no way this is a come-on with him in this state, even if he can still muster enough energy to wish it was. No way Steve’s ever gonna want to fuck him after watching him snuffle through 200 tissues and mouth-breathe all evening, but he was nuts to think he ever would anyhow. He’s just that nice, and Bucky is that pathetic, and that might not feel great, but he wants to be Steve’s friend, he really does, and even through his own shyness he can see that the guy is pretty lonely.

“You, umb. You really don’t have to.” He says, watching Steve, who waits with obvious hopefulness. “But. Uh.” Steve raises his eyebrows and gives him a little smile, and Bucky finds himself returning it helplessly. “If you really don’t mbind. It could, potentially, be really ndice to take you up on that. You really don’t have to though!”

“I want to, though.” Jesus, he’s so sincere. Bucky feels some weird kind of protective way about the earnest honesty in his eyes.

“Well, then, okay. Thangk you, I really appreciate it.” He laughs, finally feeling how miserable it would have been to go back home and try to sleep in a cold blanket pile on his mattress on the floor. “Mby place sucks right now.”

“Alright then,” Steve beams. “Let’s get you a couple things and then get you cozy.”

Bucky’s nose is not okay with him using his face to talk instead of constantly blow it. It’s gotten completely blocked, and it’s tingling unpleasantly, and running so bad again he has to smush his knuckles under his nostrils. The tickle crests and his breath catches before he can do anything about it, but he clenches his jaw and forces it into a stifle. “hhh-huh-MMP!!” The problem with doing that is it just makes the tickle— “hh-mMP!” worse. “Ugh, sorry.” His hand is a dam against his nose at this point.

“Bless you!” They both step out of the car, but Steve hurries over to his side with a crinkle in his brow. “Why don’t you just stay here and I’ll grab a few things. Anything in particular, or just tissues and NyQuil?”

“Dyquil is just schndapps,” Bucky grumbles, then his brain catches up a little and he says “tissues,” fervently, and then it catches all the way up and he says “wait, ndo way are you buyig!”

Steve cocks an eyebrow like a handsome jerk. “You really wanna go in there?” With your current nose situation? He’s kind enough to not say.

He casts about for a moment—“Grab me a little pack and then I’ll go in!”

Steve gives him a skeptical look and says “Sure,” in a way that makes him think his orders won’t be followed, but he’s too busy squishing his nose more firmly and silently begging it not to make him sneeze again to keep arguing, or to protest when Steve opens the door for him and puts his car keys in his hand before dashing into the store with a promise to be quick.

He’s back not even ten minutes later, by which time holding his nose plugged and not letting his sneezes out has put Bucky in a state of perma-misery, stifling relentless sneezes every few seconds, unable to keep his eyes fully open. Steve tosses a box of tissues onto his lap before he gets all the way into the car because he is a saint.

“Guh,” Bucky says gratefully, pulls out a wad of about ten, and lets the miserable sneeze that had been building out into the nest of forgiving softness. “HehgSHOOmpff!!” And then blows his nose forever. Finally he feels like he can speak and have a face again; the little drugstore bag is now home to a dozen nasty used-tissue balls. “Well,” he says as he puts the last one in there, “wish I hadn’t had a witness for that.”

Steve just chuckles. “You’re fine,” he murmurs, his voice a soothing rumble. “I grabbed you a toothbrush, and I’ve got some stuff that can fit you for pjs.”

Bucky feels like he sneezed out the last of his strength. “You’re way too nice.” He sniffles and slumps against the window, looking at the familiar blur of orange streetlight. “I should be more worried you’re a serial killer.” Steve chuckles again, and he likes that, so he goes on, “Probly got a nice Jeffrey Dahmer setup at your place. Sorry if I don’t make a good steak.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Steve replies, sounding indignant. Then laughs for real, shaking his head, “I’m not gonna chop you up and eat you, I swear.”

“It’s fine. Just mbake mbe into soup,” sighs Bucky. That would be warm. He’ll just be a big hot pot of Bucky, and Steve will stir him and season him so carefully with his big strong hands. This is a weird train of thought. He might have a fever. But he can still hear Steve chuckling.

Steve pulls into his parking spot and the car shudders to stillness as he takes his key out of the ignition. Next to him, Bucky is asleep with his head mushed against the window. He’d conked out for the last five or so minutes of the drive. “Hey, Buck, we just got to my place,” he says softly, trying not to sound too bedroom-y. His eyes flutter open, the blue of them standing out, and Steve takes a steadying breath because Bucky is so good-looking it catches him off guard and overwhelms him sometimes.

His eyes are glassy-bright and there’s a flush high on his cheekbones, and as he shifts upright in his seat Steve reaches over and touches his forehead without thinking about it. It’s noticeably hot, but not burning. The twins’ childhood bouts with the flu gave him a sense of bad-fever heat. “Think you got a temperature,” he murmurs sympathetically. Bucky just blinks up at him, a little wide-eyed, and only then does he realize his big meaty hand is practically covering half his face. He feels himself flush to match Bucky, and for a second they just look at each other.

Until Bucky sniffs a miserable liquid sniffle and they both almost jump. “Sorry,” Steve mutters awkwardly, and Bucky’s saying the same thing at the same time. They both move to get out, “Just one flight of stairs up.”

“huh—tschumpf!” is Bucky’s answer, his nose buried in a new handful of tissues. “huhh, hUH—huh.” The second sneeze fizzles, leaving him blinking and frowning and wrinkling his nose snifflishly against the ticklish haze as he shuts the door. “Fuck. Sorry, scuse mbe.”

“Bless you.” It’s probably not normal to find someone so sick so adorable.

Steve leads him up and along the hall and then he’s unlocking the door, feeling giddy that he’s letting Bucky into his apartment, and then guilty for being excited, when the poor guy is just hesitantly accepting a much-needed favor. Bucky trails in behind him and then stands still while Steve sets the bag from the drugstore and started to turn to him, saying, “It’s not much, but—”

“ASHHOO!” Bucky’s sneeze interrupts and snaps him forward into his tissues, and then he just stays folded over for a second like it sapped the last of his energy. Then he straightens, rubbing his nose into the tissues and sighing. “Jesus, sorry,”

“Bless you! You don’t have to be sorry, you’ve just got a cold.” Steve has to hold himself still to keep from rubbing his back.

“You’re...hh-huh….? Snfff, ugh. Totally gonna catch this, I owe you way mbore apologies.”

“I won’t hold it against you,” he chuckles, toeing his shoes off. Bucky follows suit and he continues, “I stopped caring after raising toddlers, they’re little germ factories, you catch everything.” Why’d you bring up your old-dad status, Steve? “I’ll grab you some things to sleep in.”

An hour and one confrontation about Steve giving up his bed later, Bucky is ensconced on his couch like the king of cold-medicine commercials, surrounded by blankets and pillows and tissues and steaming cups and bowls. He feels a little more human, which is nice, but lets him access how incandescently awkward he feels at being rescued from his idiotic life like a snotty Cinderella. Steve has been flitting back and forth between the couch and kitchen, fussing over him to a truly excessive degree while exuding satisfaction and cheer, like some kind of calendar-model Santa with a caretaking kink. He was practically rubbing his hands together at the prospect of getting Bucky blankets and tea on his couch. Now he’s giving a rundown of his TV system standing next to the couch and it feels the tiniest bit manic and Bucky can feel himself getting a little too quiet but he can’t help it. After a minute Steve notices, and sets the remote down.

“I should stop babbling at you and leave you in peace,” he says with a bashful chuckle, turning to leave the room.

“No, I— you don’t—” Bucky doesn’t really have a response beyond ‘please chill out and hang out with me and let me picture cuddling with you,’ which will not be said aloud.

“You really don’t hafta feel like you need to entertain me, Bucky.”

“It’s not, I don’t,” he sighs and then sniffles. He doesn’t want to sit here and stare at the wall and stress about this, alone in this room in Steve’s goddamn apartment. He maybe should have thought about just how much he’d fallen for Steve before taking him up on this offer, because the concern and sweetness and fussing are starting to ratchet up his anxiety, because what if there was a chance it meant—

“Is anything the matter?” Steve crouches smoothly to be on his level and torment him with his eyes’ blueness. When all Bucky can do for a moment is flounder he looks more concerned, and a little downcast. “I really don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. If anything’s bothering you, you can just tell me.”

What the hell is an ordinary sinner supposed to do in the face of this much sincerity? Act like he thinks he’s a damn grownup, Bucky guesses, and girds his nervous loser loins.

“Why’re you—” he starts, frowning, then cuts himself off and tries again with a small, apologetic smile.

“It’s just...this is such an imposition, and you seem...kinda weirdly happy about it? I just don’t get why.”

One side of Steve’s mouth quirks up, making him look dry and self-deprecating and unfairly handsome. “You’re worried I’m gonna start talkin about Scientology, or put you in my basement dungeon?”

Bucky shrugs. “Kinda.” Just ‘cause he went home with strangers didn’t mean he had no sense.

Steve seems to cast about for an explanation, and he also starts to turn pink. “It’s—you’re just so—” and then he sighs and sits on the end of the couch, next to his blanketed feet, addressing his words to the wall in a rush. “Honestly, Bucky? I have a huge crush on you, and,” he laughs in embarrassment, decidedly blushing now, “I’m just real happy to have a chance to take care of you in whatever little way.” Now he does turn to look at him, pained. “I’m sorry, that must be so uncomfortable to hear. I promise you’re not my hostage! Please don’t make a break for it, it’s cold out and you’re so sick. I swear I’m not Cathy Bates in Misery.”

“Y—hihdsschuh!” The sneeze catches him by surprise, but he has wadded-up tissues in his hand already anyhow. He has to blow his nose, and he does it thoroughly to buy time. Steve stares stoically at the ceiling as though waiting for sentencing. Is this seriously Steve telling Bucky...he likes him?

“You…” he stops, sniffs. He needs a plan. He doesn’t have one. His mouth is gonna keep moving anyway, “You said, ‘you’re just so—‘, what were you gonna say?”

Steve looks confused for a second, and then just helpless. “Bucky, you’re just so sweet. I’m happy for a chance to do something for you because I owe you, you get that, right?”

“Owe me?” Bucky asks, nonplussed. Steve laughs with what seems like disbelief at his confusion.

“Yes, Buck! For the last few months! For taking pity on me that first night I came into Sam’s. You asked me a question about antifreeze.”

“Yeah,” Bucky murmurs. His world is rearranging itself. Steve remembered that?

“I feel—real self-conscious, I guess, coming into the “scene,” he gives it air-quotes and Bucky’s heart swells a little more, “by the route I have. Y’know, married dad who woke up one day and realized the stuff he repressed at sixteen might be the real him. Sam’s was the third place I tried to go into. I just felt so ridiculous, I still do— 39-year-old brand-new gay dude, it’s idiotic. I was practically gonna have a panic attack, I was definitely gonna leave and not try again and just...stop trying in general, maybe, to figure this new scary shit out. Except you were there, this—this smokin-hot guy, and you’re acting like you actually want to talk to me, and… so I stayed. And came back.” He looks Bucky in the eyes and it makes Bucky’s stomach clench. “I feel like you’ve been taking care of me this whole time, helping me ease into things, helping me not to feel bad about being completely uncool, asking me about stuff I actually know about instead of laughing at me because I’ve never heard of ‘poppers’,”

At that, Bucky has to give in to the giggle bubbling out of him, which inevitably leads to a short coughing fit. His first instinct is to keep laughing, rake Steve over the coals, but Steve is looking at him with a careful sort of expression, and it occurs to Bucky that just because he’s older and seems like he has it all together and has great posture doesn’t mean he’s immune to feeling vulnerable. And he looks like he’s feeling really fucking vulnerable right now. Acting like Bucky is worthy of this adorable schoolboy crush is absurd, but it’s not like it was so many eons ago that little baby Bucky Barnes was having his First Gay Bar experience, and he’d been scared as shit.

He already feels like he missed the boat on his life. Steve is starting over at 39. He’s so fucking brave. Bucky...somehow, unthinkably, Bucky is in a position where he could really hurt this guy.

“I’mb, umb. Snfff. Thing is, I’m a little surprised…” And Steve must think that’s the prelude to rejection because he pulls this sad little smile onto his face that’s the worst thing Bucky’s ever seen, and he has to make it go away, “It’s just, to hear you tell it I took pity on you and I’ve been talking to you to, like, guide you along and coach you because I’m some saint!” He smiles, starting to feel amused. “Steve— I just wanted some reason to talk to you, dude.”

Steve blinks at him. “What?”

He has to laugh, putting his forehead in his hand. “Sorry. I, just, I have not been operating under the assumption that I had a chance with you? And now it sounds like you’re telling me I do? While I sit on your couch filling your trash can with my disgusting tissue mountain?”

All he gets from the man is “...Huh?”

“You said ‘crush’,” he insists, and he’s not laughing, his heart is pounding actually. “What did you mean by that?” He’s gonna awkwardly say that he wants to fuck, and once that box is checked in his Gay Awakening, he’ll move on to actually date people actually in his league, and that’s maybe not gonna feel great, but, well…

Steve looks up from staring at his hands, makes eye contact, and he looks a little confused and a lot like he’s facing a firing squad. “I meant, I mean that…” he blows a breath out. “Jesus I have no idea what I’m doing. I mean that I’ve been trying to work up the courage to ask you out on a date, since pretty much the first night I met you.”

Bucky’s head does a record scratch and Steve scoffs and rolls his eyes, “But I guess instead I kidnapped you when you were sick and blurted this out to you while you were trapped on my couch waiting to be left alone to sleep. I was never smooth but I swear I’ve done better than this.”

A giddy feeling is rising up in Bucky’s chest, making him forget completely about how tired and crappy he feels. “Well, I am smooth,” he says, “I’ve got game. At least, I did, until you showed up and turned me into a giggling bimbo. What the hell, Steve.”

“This is starting to seem like a romantic conversation but I can’t tell,” murmurs Steve with his face still uncertain but a little twinkle in his eye.

Bucky’s nose is gonna ruin this, he’s surprised it gave him that long a grace period. “Yeah, snfff, real romantic, I’mb gonna—hih—fuckin’ sndeeze—heh-heTShoo! Againd.”

Another sneeze teases out, and then he has to blow his nose for about ten years. “Bless you,” says Steve all quiet and bedroomy in his deep voice, and he’s definitely smiling, sparkle-eyes, leaning towards him the tiniest bit, but still looking like Bucky’s leaving him hanging a little, unsure, and he can’t help the wave of doubt he feels.

“Steve, you—” he stares at the blanket on his lap. “I’m a mess. You’ve accomplished shit, you have a real goddamn job, I—I’m just, ok, we’re both adults, but I feel like a screw-up kid compared to you.” He takes a deep breath and says what he doesn’t want to, “I’d be...pretty damn flattered if you wanted to hook up. I kinda can’t imagine you actually want to date me.”

He dares to look up and Steve looks more serious. He doesn’t say, “no shit.” He says, “I won’t argue if you say you don’t want anything, but I sure don’t agree with how you describe yourself. I don’t want to hook up—at least, not just that— I want to date you, get to know each other better, because I like you. I trust my judgement, when I think someone’s a good person.”

He says it so simply, and Bucky finds himself believing it despite himself, and a warm happy fire is kindling under his ribs. “Well, shit,” he murmurs, “it’s starting to seem like you’re asking me out.”

“It’s...starting to seem like you might be saying yes? If I am?” Steve looks agonized and Bucky’s doubts are no match for the giddiness fizzing up inside him, and he lets it show on his face with a grin, and whatever that looks like makes Steve kinda gulp and scootch up closer to him. Bucky makes a show of giving a slow, considering nod. Yes.

Steve has this soft, nervous little smile on his face, but his eyes hold something weighty, almost burning, as he moves even closer, and it’s just, it’s really, wow, Bucky has maybe never been taken seriously in quite this way by anyone before, it makes his knees feel watery and kindles something in his core. “I know you’re sick,” he rumbles, “but I feel like I gotta kiss you,” and how is it that the softer he speaks the deeper his voice sounds? He brushes his curled fingers over Bucky’s cheek because that’s how close they are now and this isn’t really Bucky’s life, is it? “What if I was to kiss you, right now?”

It’s hard to tell with the sexiness melting his brain but he realizes Steve is actually asking, because he’s a gentleman— a gentleman Bucky wants to be taken apart and turned inside out by. “Then you would be a guaranteed victim of my plague,” he breathes. “But I wouldn’t stop you, I’m not that selfless.”

“Sounds like a dare,” Steve murmurs, and tilts his head and presses their lips together.

It’s a short simple kiss but they each give a quiet gasp at the contact, and then stay there a moment. Steve’s beard isn’t huge but he feels it, like a firm underline to the shockingly warm plush pressure of his lips. He thankfully tragically remembers that congested people can’t make out and pulls away after just a brief press of lips, but not before giving a soft lick to Bucky’s, full of promised things to come.

They sit there a few inches apart and breathe. Bucky feels like a vibrating tuning fork. He just barely stops himself from shakily saying “wow,” like a highschool virgin, but when he sees Steve looking at him with lips still parted and a gobsmacked expression he changes his mind and lets it out anyway, “wow,” with a giddy grin.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, blinking like he got hit with a cartoon hammer, going from pink to red, and then he swoops in and kisses Bucky’s cheek, and then stands, going, “Excuse me, just gotta go...out of your sightline, and. Do something cool. And serious. No victory dances.”

…..the next morning…….

Steve could hear Bucky in the shower, sneezing three times, but not sounding—four times—nearly as heavy or exhausted as the night before. A few minutes and one loud noseblow later, he came out wrapped in a towel, mercilessly bare-chested, his nose bright red but his eyes clear and cheerful. Steve’s attention caught on his chest as his nipples tightened in the relative chill as Bucky said sheepishly, “forgot my clo-hothes—” his voice swooping to a breathy quaver on the last word, “hhh-hh-hehh—EHisSHOooh!” he turned as far away from Steve’s part of the room as possible and sneezed over his shoulder. “Snnfff. Excuse me, sorry.”

“Can I lend you some warmer stuff, just for now while we eat breakfast? There’s no way you’re not still sick,” Steve fussed, forcing himself to round the kitchen island slowly and casually instead of rushing over and wrapping him up in his arms and kissing his red nose that was twitching again. He quelled it with another sniff that sounded a lot less congested than the previous night.

“Ah, I’m ok. I felt really bad yesterday, but I slept so well,” he said with a warm grateful smile at Steve that went to his toes, “I don’t feel shitty and run-down anymore, just all, like, shnuffly.”

Steve chuckled helplessly and went over to rub his shoulder. “You’re adorable.”

“No way!” Bucky glowered, but then a few drops fell from his wet hair to his chest and neck, and he shivered into a sneeze so quick and light it sounded incomplete, “hih—tish!” followed by “ih-hihtchoo!” and he blinked, taken by surprise.

“That was... the cutest thing that ever happened,” Steve said truthfully.

“Shuddup— heh—edschoo!”

[soft-bugs]

Stress Relief/Calming Distraction/etc. Ideas for Regressors (based on my own experiences and things I've learned from others)

-- FIRST AND FOREMOST,

• Take some deep breaths. I know that's like listening to a broken record and obvs doesn't work for everyone, but it's worth a try!

• Drink some water and put some comfy clothes on and/or wrap your favorite blankie around yourself!

• Put on some soft lighting, if available. Especially if you're overstimulated!

• If you gotta/wanna bodily/vocally stim, DO IT!!! I also like to use stim toys and touch/hug soft things like a blanket, stuffie or pillow.

• If you have a pet, give 'em a cuddle or some pets! (a stuffie is also very comforting!) Or if you have one that can't/doesn't like to be handled/touched, you can just sit and watch them move around (feeding them if needed, can also be fun to watch!) (I love watching my fish swim around/eat sometimes 😹)

• If you're feeling anxious; dip your face in a bowl of cold/ice water, eat something sour or spicy like Warheads sour spray, Sour Patch Kids, Takis or jalapeños, hold something cold like an ice pack against your chest/stomach, try to relax your jaw and shoulders, use stim toys/stress balls

• If you're feeling angry; you can crumple/tear up pieces of paper or an old notebook. Writing down your feelings and/or scribbling rapidly before doing this is good too! You can also punch a pillow or anything soft enough to where you won't hurt yourself. Ik it can be wasteful, but snapping wooden pencils into lil bits was very therapeutic for me for a while! If you happen to have balloons for whatever reason, you can tie one to a rubber band(/string?) and bounce it against your fist like onea these babies:

• From the one above, write out your feelings! Even if it's just "I am feeling _ because _". If you have a hard time finding the words, here's some cool emotion wheels I like to use!:

• If you are on your period, take some painkillers (Midol is a lifesaver!), try to avoid caffeine & nicotine if you smoke, use a heating pad/heated blanket if available, take a hot bath or shower, if possible exercise/walking or certain stretches can help with cramping, and I'm gonna be completely honest here free-bl33ding on the toilet just helps sometimes idk 😂

-- NEXT, DISTRACTIONS:

• If possible, go for a walk or ride your bike around the block!

• If possible, try to talk to/call or text someone you trust, like a friend or family member. You can talk about anything, it doesn't have to be about what's causing your stress/anxiety/etc.

• Watch TV, YouTube, stim GIFs/videos, etc. Whatever helps you relax or laugh!

• Play a calming video game (I like to play Slime Rancher, Animal Crossing, Cooking Mama, Night In The Woods, Webkinz and No Man's Sky on creative mode!)

• Be creative! Even if you think you're "bad" at it bc it doesn't matter if it looks "pretty," you don't have to show anyone or post it anywhere. All that matters is if it makes you feel better! Drawing/doodling and coloring have always been a very great emotional outlet for me! Other fun stuff you could do: Splatter/abstract paint, make a collage or start a scrapbook, make a DIY craft with stuff around your house, SCRIBBLE!!, play around with an instrument or music program/app, design a character on Picrew or some sort of character creator, print out/make paper dolls and their clothes, stickerbomb something, film a music video featuring ur pets/stuffies/toys!

• Continuing the creativity one, make a mood/stim/agere board for yourself, an OC, your fave/comfort characters(s), etc.!

• Do word/number puzzles like word searches, crossword puzzles, sudoku, acrostic puzzles, cryptograms, framework/fill-in puzzles, etc.

• If you like making lists (like me), write out a list! (Ideas: Your comfort characters/movies/shows, your favorite board/video games, favorite places or cool places you've been, interesting animals, favorite bands/musical artists, current favorite songs, etc.)

• If you're like me, you can play some music and write down your favorite lyrics from each song that plays! (And doodle/scribble around the paper borders in between hehe) And/or make a playlist! Maybe make a playlist of songs that make you feel better in that moment, so you can look for it whenever ur stressed/upset!

• If possible, take a hot bath (you can add bubbles, bath bombs and/or toys!) Or a quick shower. Oh, and speaking of, I have a tip for people who struggle with brushing your teeth/remembering to do so! Try brushing your teeth when you shower!

These aren't the only things I do/know about, just ones I can remember at the moment, and they may not all work for everyone of course, but hopefully this is helpful to someone. 🥺 Feel free to add more in the replies/tags/reblogs!

[writhe]

hey everyone! yesterday i made a post about doing a fundraiser for my dear sweet olive through etsy, but the post got some traction here and it'd be nice to spare the etsy fees so i'm gonna try to run it through venmo

we're trying to raise some money to help offset the cost of olive's laptop repair which is an overwhelming 550 bucks

olive's addition on previous post:

i'm selling these patches starting at 11 bucks a pop (but you're very, very welcome to give more if you can and want to!). they're screen printed on 8x8 rust-red fabric i got from cutting up old medical scrubs. very cool and DIY etc

i have PLENTY! please DM me to donate and i'll give you my venmo. let me know a good mailing address for you (you can message it on here if you're comfortable with that or you could put in in the venmo memo)

patches are being mailed in a stamped envelope so there won't be tracking! i have plenty to send off and out to ya so please HMU! help a gal out and get a cool patch out of it!

[kcalsforhim]

friday 1 november 2024 - 𐙚 ˚🍰 ⋆｡˚⊹❀˖°

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calories : 434 steps : 8.6 k

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contains : rice, chicken also contains : a muffin also : shredded cabbage

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alright, so starting on november first i was excited to get back to restricting, its been a while so i cant exactly recall what i was doing on friday... sorry for slacking, i wanted to update yesterday but my mac was annoying me so i just gave up on that then... although yesterday night i found this callender, so im motivated to start writing here. im not gonna post a link on twt anymore cause thats a pain in the ass to be frank... LOL. i like these kinds of callenders i can fill in, so thats what ill be doing... just a lil extra. this months theme will be nijntje.

on friday i did good on the cals. as i said earlier i was excited to restrict again after my free day on the 31st. i do remmeber going on the treadmil for one hour that day because i was motivated, but i didnt reach my 10 k. gonna try to get back on that however its sunday as im writing this sooo my weekend goal is only 5 k... fatty ?

the food tasted very good. i did not have rice in a long ass time. or well... to me.. ok ?? the chicken was good. the muffin was sweet and had some strawberry jam in them. my mother made it for me. and cabbage salad is well... cabbage... and um, vinnegar. i remember telling haku how i made it and i left him traumatised... lol

on other exciting news... i found the charger to the best device ive ever had the grace to spend 75 euros on. when i tell u this thing is holding on so strong causeeee i lost the charger for like a month and yet still it was giving me service... the strongest soldier LOL.

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bodychecks i took on friday. i was still a bit bloated because of the sushi but its gotten better already. i went from 52 something kg to 51 something kg. im almost back down to my LW (50.8)

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a glorious photo of a pretty skinny person. this reminds me of the minecraft thinspo. wait lemme. hold on. YEAH i want to be like this so bad i made eli order me like a minecraft hoodie thing and a phonecase and a plushie so i could serve realness. should i diy the tnt block ?

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍮 ⋅ ˚⊹

this song is cool and catchy and the bluetooth thing does get a bit repetitive but thats ok because its on repeat regardless lol. zomb ur real.

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍮 ⋅ ˚⊹

[snwusberry]

🎄✨ CHRISTMAS 2024: DECEMBER 5th

pairing: soobin x black reader

genre: fluff

warning(s): food and drink

wc: 1351

IT'S ONLY FITTING TO POST THIS ON HIS BIRTHDAY, RIGHT? (don't look at the time)

reader pov

soobin and i walk hand in hand as we wander through the gorgeous holiday market. the scenery is just breathtaking, with twinkling lights hanging above the stalls, and cheerful chatter surrounding us as people browse through everything.

“where do we even start?” soobin asks, his eyes already scanning the stalls. he's clearly interested but he still looks to me to make the call.

“hot chocolate?” i suggest and he instantly nods and nudges me towards the stand that sells all kinds of warm drinks.

the smell of cinnamon takes ober my senses once we arrive in front of the stall which makes me feel nostalgic, remembering how the house used to smell during the winter back at home.

"hi, what can i get for yoy two?" the man asks with a friendly smile spread across his face.

"uhh....” soobin trails off, and i watch as he scans the menu with serious concentration, as if debating his entire life over marshmallows or whipped cream.

“what are you gonna get?” he asks me, leaning in with a teasing smile.

“not sure yet. i'll probably regret my choice in about five minutes, knowing me.”

“well, lucky for you, i’m here to help you pick again when that happens.”

i roll my eyes but can’t help smiling, feeling the warmth spread through me despite the cold.

"can i get one hot chocolate with extra whipped cream, and a peppermint cocoa?" he asks as politely as ever and the man nods, telling our order to the person preparing the drinks. he tells us our total and before soobin can even think of paying, i beat him to it. he never let's me pay but it's his special day after all.

after a short wait, we get our drinks, head further into the market.

"baby, look." i say, pointing to someone dressed as the grinch, obviously here for the kids but, oh well. "we have to take a picture!"

"are you sure? i mean is it necessary?"

"of course. come." i practically drag him all the way to the small group that was formed and wait for tye kiddies to have their chance before its our turn.

"smile." i say to soobin, holding my phone out to take a picture. he puts on the fakes smile ove ever seen on him, which makes me lower my phone. "come on, smile babe. here can you please take a picture of us?" turn and ask another person who's nearby and, thank goodness they agree.

i make my way into the frame and start posing for the picture and the grinch is even posing with me. naturally, soobin gets more comfortable and i see that gorgeous dimpled smile on his face as he joins in.

"thank you." i say to both the person taking the picture and the person in the costume and we walk off.

"you're insane." soobin comments as we walk to a more quiet side of the market.

"that's what yiu love about me."

"you're absolutely right." he says, pulling me into him. "what else do you have in planned for us?" he asks, taking a sip from his cup.

"wreaths." i say, smiling up at him like an idiot.

"wreaths?"

"there's a diy area. we can make wreaths."

"okay, let's go."

we walk together to the tent where we'll be making the wreaths.

it smells like fresh pine and cinnamon as we step inside the cozy workshop the fairy lights above cast a soft golden glow, and the chatter of other people buzzes in the air. i tug on soobin's hand, leading him to an open spot at one of the long wooden tables.

"alright, babe, let's make the best wreath this place has ever seen." he says enthusiastically and laugh, grabbing the pre-cut wreath frame and a pile of branches.

"you're and really into this, huh?"

"are you kidding? this seems fun. it's eben better because i'm here with you." he says, leaning closer and i roll my eyes playfully and start weaving the branches into the frame.

soobin is already chatting up the older woman beside him, asking her about the best technique to make the wreath look “fluffy and symmetrical.”

"do you think it’s better to start with the bigger branches or the smaller ones?" he asks her.

"bigger ones first, of course. gives it a solid base." she says with a chuckle to which he turns back to me with a triumphant grin.

"did you hear that? bigger branches first. we're going to dominate this."

"babe, this isn’t a competition." i remind him, though i’m grinning too.

"everything's a competition." he quips, but his hands are careful and precise as he works. he's busy muttering to himself, narrating his every move like he’s hosting a craft show. "okay, we’re going to tuck this little guy in here… snip that bit off… oh yeah, that’s looking good. what do you think, babe?"

i glance at his wreath and burst out laughing. it's an explosion of greens, holly, and ribbons. it's a little chaotic but full of charm.

"it's very you." i comment wholeheartedly and he smiles widely.

"thank you," he says, pretending to bow. "yours is beautiful, by the way. elegant. refined. we balance each other out."

"why thank you."

as the workshop goes on, we exchange tips and tease each other, adding pinecones, bows, and even a tiny snowman figurine he insists gives his wreath character. by the time we’re done, our hands are sticky with glue, and we’re both grinning like fools.

"not bad for our first time, huh?" soobin w says, holding his creation up proudly.

"not bad at all." i agree, leaning in to admire his work and sneak a quick kiss. the scent of pine lingers in the air as we step outside with our wreaths in paper bags.

the next few hours blur into a whirlwind of christmas magic, soobin's enthusiasm carrying us from one activity to the next.

we move to the gingerbread decorating station. soobin dives in headfirst, piping on icing with surprising skill. his gingerbread man ends up looking almost perfect. mine? it's a simple design, if you can even call it that, but he insists it has classic charm.

next, we wander into the ornament painting tent where he spends way too much time on a snowflake ornament, detailing every line with glittery silver paint. i barely even concentrate on mine because i'm too busy watching my lovely boyfriend the entire time. his enthusiasm is like a breath of fresh air and its so addicting to watch. i end up adding our initials and the year in gold on my little ornament. when i show him, his face softens.

“that's definitely going on the tree.” he says, holding it up like it’s something precious.

the choir singing carols by the big christmas tree draws us in. we stop for a moment, hands entwined, listening to the harmonies fill the crisp night air. i belt out the last line of "o holy night", a little off-key but unapologetically loud.

i turn to soobin who gives be one of his signature stares and i stick my tongue outbat him.

“oh please, you love me anyway.” i say with a shrug, and he laugh because i'm absolutely right.

we end our night at the carousel. we pick the sleigh seat instead of the horses, sitting side by side as the music plays and the world blurs into a whirl of lights and laughter. his arm is around me, his breath warm against my cheek as he whispers.“this is the best birthday ever. thank you so much babe.” he whispers with his arm around me.

"no need to thank me babe, i'd do this all over again for you. see you turn into a child again." i tell him and he smiles at me, leaning in to press a kiss on my lips. "happy birthday babe."

by the time we leave, my cheeks ache from smiling, my hands are full of crafts and treats, and my heart feels fuller than it has in ages.

[excineribusbooks]

Resource Post: Supplies, Equipment, and Software

So I've had some people ask about the supplies and equipment I use to make my books! This is not a comprehensive list, nor is it an official tutorial on how to make a book (for that, I recommend starting with Renegade Publishing's resource documents, DAS Bookbinding, or SeaLemon's YouTube tutorials -- all free, no patreon required!), but if you're floundering because you don't know what you need to get, hopefully this will help a little bit ❤️ If I discover more good resources or change up my style, I'll add to this post.

Of note: I'm based in the US, so this list is unfortunately pretty US-centric. Apologies!

SUPPLIES

Disclaimer #1: I have a background in book conservation, so I'm picky to a fault about the supplies I use. To make a long-lasting book, you want to look for "acid-free" or "archival" materials -- BUT, a lot of consumer craft stores have realized those are good buzzwords to slap on products even if they aren't really archival. Your best bet is to buy from stores that supply materials to libraries and archives; those tend to be higher quality and stick to actual archival standards. Talas, Hollander's, University Products, and Colophon Book Arts Supply are good places to start.

That said! If price matters more than longevity, hitting up Michaels or Joann Fabrics is totally fine. This is a hobby. The bookbinding police are not gonna come smash down your door because you didn't use archival-quality craft paper. My big recommendation, though: at least get your glue and paste from Talas. High-quality adhesive makes a huge difference in how well, and how long, a book holds together. Bad adhesives can turn brittle with time, stain your paper/cloth, and make all your hard work fall apart.

So, all that said, here's what I use:

BOARD - Davey Binder's Board, 0.098" GLUE - Jade 403 PVA PASTE - Zen Shofu wheat paste (you shouldn't have to buy more than half a pound -- a little goes a long way) CLOTH - Either Arrestox or Dover bookcloth, which comes in a wide variety of colors and holds up extremely well to whatever you want to do to it THREAD - 25/3 linen thread, which I run over a small block of beeswax to make it easier to handle and give it better "locking" properties as I sew. For bigger books of ten signatures or more, I sew onto 3/8" linen tapes for extra support. DECORATIVE PAPER - Hollander's is a treasure trove of decorative papers for endsheets and covers; Talas has some really nice ones, too, but they tend to be pricier (since unfortunately everything at Talas has gotten a lot pricier lately) PRINTING PAPER - Hammermill Colors paper, 20lb, in cream; 24lb is also a good weight that feels a little more substantial than regular printer paper. (I'll probably switch to 24lb once my 20lb paper runs out.) To get the right grain direction, I buy a ream of 11x17 paper and cut it in half to make standard letter-sized sheets (8.5x11). Here's a quick primer on grain direction and why it's important when making a book! ENDBANDS - I've never had the patience to sew my own endbands (though I hope to gain that patience someday!), so I just use premade ones like these.

EQUIPMENT

Disclaimer #2: a lot of the stuff on this list is professional-grade (or close to it) with prices to match. You definitely don't have to buy everything right off the bat. It took me fifteen years to accumulate it all, and you can DIY a lot of bookbinding equipment -- a good googling will lead you to all sorts of innovative ways hobby bookbinders set up their shops. The Renegade Publishing resource documents also have a lot of A+ recommendations.

PRINTER - For text, I use a Brother B&W laser printer with auto-duplex (auto-duplex is key when printing a book); for images, both B&W and color, I use a Canon color inkjet printer set to at least 300 DPI. I fully admit having two printers is an absurd setup, but what laser printers can do well, inkjets absolutely suck at, and vice-versa -- and like I said, I'm hella picky. You can get by fine with a single laser printer! Just make sure it's got auto-duplex to save yourself a lot of pain. GUILLOTINE - I have this model, which goes in and out of stock with some regularity. The trick with this guy is to (a) sandwich your text block between some scrap board so the clamp doesn't leave a dent, and (b) REALLY CRANK DOWN on the clamp as tight as you possibly can to keep the paper from shifting as you cut. This fixes 99% of the skewing problems mentioned in the reviews. PRESS - I have a little cast-iron press I bought off a coworker for fifty bucks; similarly, you might have luck searching eBay, looking at Affordable Bookbinding Equipment (Jim does incredible work!), searching craft stores for a flower press, or even just using two pieces of wood and a few C-clamps. SeaLemon on YouTube also has a good video on how to DIY a book press. PRESS BOARDS - For setting the hinges in the press, I use a pair of brass-edged boards like these. It's a good investment if you want to get really nice, crisp hinges, but it's also 100% possible to DIY brass-edged boards if you want. At my very first job, we even set our hinges by taping sewing needles to the book before putting it in the press! FINISHING PRESS - I have this one, which I use to back my books in combination with these backing irons BACKING HAMMER - To my chagrin, I've discovered that having an actual backing hammer makes backing a book way, way easier. Some folks have had good luck with a cobbler's hammer or just a regular old hammer from a hardware store, but I splurged on a student hammer from Hollander's, and it works fantastically. (I wouldn't recommend buying the "professional" hammers, though, because seriously, $90 for a hammer?! No.) BONE FOLDER - I'm actually not a fan of bone folders made from real bone; I like Teflon folders a lot better for scoring and flattening. (Real bone folders tend to burnish the material, an effect I'm rarely going for.) CUTTING MACHINE - A Silhouette Curio. This is 100% optional, but it's how I do the bulk of my cover designs, including cut-outs, embossing, foiling (with a foil quill attachment), and spine titling. The software and overall quality are way better than Cricut, and its 5mm clearance means you can fit more than just vinyl in there. Sadly, Silhouette has discontinued the Curio, but it's still possible to buy from third-party sellers -- and if you don't care about the 5mm clearance, I've heard good things about the Silhouette Cameo line.

A side note on vinyl, from the obnoxiously picky book conservator: if you're aiming for longevity with your books, using HTV in your book designs may not be the best idea. Not only can the adhesives be questionable, but the plasticizers in vinyl break down in really weird, gross ways once several decades have passed. That's why I tend to stick with cut-outs and foiling instead of HTV. But, again: if you just want to make something pretty, don't worry about it!

SOFTWARE

TYPESETTING - I use Affinity Publisher -- it's similar to Adobe InDesign, but with a flat cost instead of a bullshit subscription model. I am by no means an expert in this, since I've only been designing books for a couple years; pretty much everything I learned, I learned from Aliya Regatti's tutorial, plus or minus a lot of googling and noodling around. I've discovered that it does get cranky if your book is over 250 pages or so, meaning you may have to split longer fics into multiple files. That said, I've been really happy with it, and it goes on sale every now and then if the $70 price tag is too much.

As always, Renegade Publishing has a whole lot of tutorials for other software options, including Microsoft Word, InDesign, LaTeX, and Scribus if you already have access to one of those instead.

IMPOSITION - "Imposition" is when you lay out a book so all the pages are in order once you fold + gather the signatures. Since Affinity Publisher doesn't do this automatically on export, I use Bookbinder 3.0, which is an old but nice little Java program that breaks a single PDF into a series of properly imposed signatures. I usually set it to 6 sheets per signature.

MISCELLANEOUS

IMAGES

The Noun Project is a gigantic repository of basic SVGs and PNGs that are not only great for cutting machines, but for adding flourishes to your title page, chapter headings, and scene dividers. Every single book I've made has used at least one image from here; I pay for the yearly Noun Pro subscription, but it's not necessary to use the site.

Unsplash is perfect for photo elements

Pixabay not only has a great archive of photos, but illustrations and vector images as well

Surprisingly, Wikipedia also has a lot of good Creative Commons photos attached to their articles!

FONTS

1001Fonts is a good starting point for finding free fonts, as is FontSpace and DaFont

If you're willing to pay for fonts (and sometimes it's worth it for a well-designed font that's perfect for your project), Creative Fabrica and Pixel Surplus have some good stuff, including discounted bundles of multiple fonts

[petra-creat0r]

Deltarune: Fool's Fate Ch. 1 Secret Boss

So I've decided I should probably post refs of my Fool's Fate bosses since I did that for my prediction bosses and since I'm including them in my secret boss reactions, it'd probably be useful that people know who the heck they are.

Though Dorothy and her backstory has been mentioned on my side blog @apupp3tw0-strings as Chicago learned about it in real time, and I've mentioned her a few times here, I'm betting most of you don't really know about her as I haven't actually posted her backstory here. So here you go.

(Dorothy's battle theme by my wonderful friend @kierangecko)

Her name isn't intentionally a Wizard of Oz reference (though looking at her outfit during her height I can see it), but instead as it means "Gift of God", which will make more sense when I get into her backstory and how she met the "strange someone". Basically, her name, her whole identity, was a gift from what could be considered A God. Perhaps more of the eldritch variety to Darkners but still a God.

Her text quirk is speaking in clips stitched together from those she's heard, aka other dialogue from Undertale, Deltarune, or Fool's Fate for the purposes of me playing her in an RP I've been running on my Discord server. She has no voice of her own, and can only mimic the voice's she's heard.

I love Dorothy. She snowballed from me getting the idea of a mannequin or something without identity or purpose that was given one by the "strange someone". I also think she'll hold a place in my heart as the first secret boss I created straight up. Before even thinking of making Bitsy, Elymas, or Veratus. Back when I was in the mind set of "I don't want too make prediction bosses because I'll get it wrong when the chapters come out and it'll be ruined." Now I have had character development and said "Fuck it. I'm making my own take, this was gonna diverge from canon anyways."

I still need to finish my Dorothy plush.

Backstory under the cut

She used to be nothing but a blank doll. An empty face with no name, no identity, no purpose. A blank slate longing to be filled. Her Light World counter part is a DIY doll kit that was meant to be a Gyftmas gift for Broadway, but was left up in the attic and forgotten about.

No one paid any mind to her. Barely anyone knew she existed as she wandered aimlessly around the Dusty Plains. Her only companion being the snake fortune teller who'd set up shop out in the Plains. Jeanie would listen to the doll even without her saying a word, and read her fates many time. Each time the snake assuring the doll that her future held infinite potential.

On day though, the doll came across a man. A strange someone who offered to lend her a hand. He gave her an identity. A face, a voice, a name. Dorothy. And after pulling the last thread to give her a mouth, the man gave Dorothy a purpose. Live the life she wished to lead, but come to him if she needed anymore help. And so she did. The first step in the man's new plan.

With the man's help, Dorothy was finally recognized and rose in popularity. Eventually joining the Upper Choir, the governing force over the Land of Attica. Dorothy couldn't be happier. People knew her. People talked to her. People... listened to her. It was around this time that the man enacted the next phase of his plan. Showing Dorothy the truth of this world. Revealing that they were all nothing more than a bunch of dusted toys and clothes up in an attic. The Lightners they all worshiped weren't coming back for them.

The rest of the Choir didn't like it when Dorothy started spreading this new gospel. They exiled her back to the Dusty Plains. This outraged the ragdoll. They refused to see the truth. They were blind. All of them were blind, blind fools. In her exile, Dorothy was driven to violence, ripping the Plains apart with pins and needles, attempting to puppeteer those who refused to see the truth right in front of them. She had to be stopped.

And to think that her only friend since the beginning was the one to call the Choir Guard.

Dorothy was locked away for quote "Your own and every one else's safety." She yelled and screamed at that stupid Magician as he walked back to the elevator, leaving Dorothy all alone in a padded cell forever.

... That was until a possessed puppet and his companions happened to find their way down.

----------------------------

Her story is meant to mirror/parallel Jevil's in a way, though it also takes a bit from Spamton's. I think I've gotten better at writing secret boss backstory's since making my prediction bosses, but I still like Dorothy and her backstory. She and Jevil are friends post Fool's Fate Chapter 1.

[buried-in-autumn-leaves]

My girl btw if you even care (Qiu Route OC Intro Post)

Beatrice Callegari (who later goes by Bea, and then Trixie, changing each step) is my obligatory crossover OC. She moved around a lot, but in a small area, spending the last few years before Step One in Prism Vista. She's stubbornly independent, and blames Opal for her not having any friends. She liked the city because she likes loud active places, so the quiet nature of Golden Grove puts her off, and she complains about it constantly, going as far as to refuse to admit when she likes something about it.

She like... hates boys as a kid 😭 LIKE YK HOW LITTLE GIRLS ARE LIKE EWWW BOYS

She feels the need to be better than any boy she meets, so when she meets Qiu and he genuinely impresses her it pisses her off. When Qiu tells her what his name means and she doesn't know what hers means she's like why would you ever one up me like that I hate you. She has a crush on him from the start but it manifests in like a "I hang around him because I need to impress him so he thinks I'm better than him". Qiu doesn't catch on, he just thinks they're hanging out. She gets along fine with Tamarack but they do clash in Step One because she tends to treat everyone like they're less capable, like she parents her friends and it can come across as infantilization 😭

Because of her issues with boys her and Ren beef hardcore in Step One, and she doesn't really understand why it bothers her so much when Qiu sides with Ren over her. She also HATES Baxter but she will heal, trust 🤞

Step Two Bea is a MENACE. She wants so badly to be better than she was, but with Tama and Qiu going through their teen angst phases it basically like annoys her? Like she is trying to be better but she's very emotional and set off really easily. This leads to her having trouble keeping friends because of her trouble keeping her outbursts in check. She does get better at this over the course of the step, but it's basically a consequence of her suddenly deciding she's not gonna be that mean kid anymore.

She is really protective over Tamarack in this step. This causes some issues when Qiu and Tama clash, because Bea does defend Tamarack, but not out of any genuine anger towards Qiu. She just misses the way Qiu used to be and it makes her mad that other people effected them the way they did. This step is also where the majority of healing with Opal happens, which I'm not gonna talk about too much until I can play more of the step.

Also !!!! Her gender journey is effected a lot by Qiu in Step Two. She still uses she/her in Step Two (she's genderqueer and uses all pronouns after this) but she already knows that something isn't right here. She won't say anything because she has this paranoid obsession with the idea that people will think she's 'copying' Qiu due to how small the town is. She goes by Bea because she hates her birth name and figured it'd be easy to explain, but she still doesn't like it.

In Step Three, they go by Trixie. Fun fact this name was actually chosen by Qiu who called her that once as a joke, but she ends up liking it so much she keeps it. At his point he's accepted his emotions as part of him, and reached a sort of healthy middle between letting everything show and repressing until he snaps. This manifests in the form of almost constant snark and sarcasm.

This is the point where he gets into cosmetology. As a baby punk she did a lot of research into things like DIY and upcycling clothes but found she had a knack for cutting and styling hair. They love makeup and dyeing hair but won't dye their own because of the damage it can do to naturally red hair. (Side note, that one pic of those two girls where like one is sitting on the others lap and doing her makeup- that's Trix and Qiu.)

He doesn't give up on his aggressive protective instinct, even if Tama insists she doesn't need to be protected. He gets along a lot better with his mom, and even though he still misses the city a ton, he gets a sort of attachment to Golden Grove. (She's literally like there is one good small town.)

Most of this is open to change as the game comes out, but I am really excited about their character since I don't do OCs that don't like people much, especially their parents.