#post-catws stucky

[rillils]

🌸 post-catws stucky + hug

The first tendril of want shocks him like a splash of ice-cold water poured down his spine.

Bucky doesn’t know at first – doesn’t know what, doesn’t know how. But the want is there, curled up in his chest: small, and starving, like some trembling newborn thing whose first taste of life is hunger, crying to be fed and soothed.

There’s a half-remembered feeling in the back of his mind, something he reaches for when the want aches sharp and spark-bright inside him. The word for it is short and sweet in Bucky’s mouth, so gentle it barely touches his tongue at all, all throat and soft palate: ‘hug’.

It’s a simple concept. Two arms go around one body – that’s all it takes. One step, and there it is: a hug. And Bucky imagines it vividly: his own mismatched arms around Steve, and Steve’s arms folding around him, like a circle – the shape of the infinite, of timeless things like the two of them. A line that should end, but constantly finds one more beginning instead.

He tries to see it, Steve’s broad chest brushing against his as their bodies meet, the swell of Steve’s arms enveloping him, Steve’s big palms splayed wide against his back, touching him. Gentle. Like Steve’s eyes on him are gentle; like the clasp of his hand on Bucky’s shoulder is gentle, always. So gentle, perhaps, that Bucky would hardly even feel the hug around him.

But he would take it, gentle or no. Because the truth, where it lies in the empty pit of his stomach, is that he starves for it, day after day, the want pulsing inside him with every beat of his heart. He just doesn’t know how to ask for it.

So Steve does the asking for him.

His hair is ruffled, limned with copper and wisps of gold in the late afternoon light, and his hands are unsure, nervous. But his eyes. His eyes take Bucky in, searching, urgent – and for a moment, Bucky is sure that Steve, too, must have been starving for this.

“Can I hug you?” he says, and the word sounds especially sweet when it’s Steve pronouncing it. When there’s a ‘you’ attached to it, and that one syllable becomes two, joined seamlessly together, and the new word rolls smooth and honeyed down the curl of Steve’s tongue, hug you, hug you, hug you. “Would that be okay?”

Bucky wets his lips. ‘Yes,’ he means to say, but the word that slips out of his mouth in a rasp instead says, “Please.”

So Steve gathers him close, two arms and one body and his nose buried in Bucky’s dark mop of hair, and he carves a snug space out of himself to make room for Bucky right there, his hands fisted in the back of Bucky’s shirt, their chests pressed so tight together that his heartbeat pounds behind Bucky’s ribs.

It’s not a passing touch, the fluttering echo of a hug Bucky feared he might barely feel. It’s persistent. It’s desperate. It’s a hungry little thing, a creature to be fed tenderly, steadily, so it’ll grow and live, and live.

He wraps his own arms around Steve, and grasps at him just as fiercely as his want commands, a wet exhale shuddering out of his lips to land in the crook of Steve’s neck.

He was wrong, he realizes now, framed in Steve’s embrace like a timeless work of art. He was missing a step.

A hug is a simple concept: two arms go around one body, and they hold on.

[florida3exclamationpoints]

[somanywords]

Some things stay the same. 🌾

A double header for @stucky-week day 3: Shared Life Experiences & Naps.  

[luna-rainbow]

CATWS and its building of stakes

Part of the reason why CATWS was so memorable in its appeal was the way it built the stakes throughout the story. Each of the major characters had something(s) at stake by the final act, and that was pivotal for the plot to sustain its tension and for the satisfaction in its final payoff.

The overarching conflict was the global, existential threat of Hydra getting their mass murder machine up in the air, and the ideological question of what the middle ground between freedom and security should be. But what made the final act so moving was the intimately personal stakes for many of our characters.

There was, obviously, the very personal stake Steve had to surmount in having to physically get through Bucky in order to protect the freedom he was advocating for. But apart from Steve, every other major character was challenged with a personal sacrifice in the final showdown. Nat was faced with having all her covers blown and her past - that she had tried so hard to hide - revealed to the world. Sam was confronted with going back into the field after losing his partner so traumatically that he changed careers. Fury was grappling with dismantling the organisation that he had devoted his life to build. And on the other side, Pierce and Rumlow had invested decades of their lives in an ideology which if successful would install them at the top of the food chain.

There was a great meta from years back talking about how well the movie established the competencies of the characters before introducing threats -- and how we were then able to quickly understand the threat because of how competent we have seen our protagonists be. Every action sequence served a purpose and built upon the previous one.

The Lumerian Star sequence was fantastic in how effectively it established the competence of not just Steve and Nat, but the entire Strike team. Rumlow and Rollins were good at their job; they're not super soldiers or super spies, sure, but they were skilled enough to keep pace with Steve and Nat.

This was an important foreword for the elevator fight, which itself was a pre-requisite for the Causeway fight. We have seen both Steve and the Strike team capable of taking down multiple pirates swiftly, so when the elevator fight started, there was a genuine sense of threat to Steve, even if he would make a quick job of disabling them. Then, after seeing Steve's skills against a very capable Strike team, it became all the more terrifying when the Winter Soldier almost nailed him to a van about 2 minutes into their fight.

On the other side, the Winter Soldier's introduction was an assemblage of horror story tropes -- of unexpected manifestations and impossible disappearances, and urban myths stretching back through half a century. The two characters used to introduce him were extremely competent from what we had seen of them. There's Fury, normally prescient and wily, scraping by a very determined assassination attempt, only to be stopped by the Winter Soldier materialising in the middle of the road...which he escaped, only to be later shot through the wall. There's Nat, normally cunning and cautious, telling Steve of how the Winter Soldier successfully ambushed her, of how his kills spanned 50 years, a logical improbability.

Not only was Steve about to meet the Winter Soldier with the weight of these legends behind him, from the vantage point of Hydra, they were sending out the Asset to meet Captain America with his historical legends behind him (oh look, another narrative parallel). All of this build-up culminated in the Causeway fight. The technical impressiveness of the stunts aside, part of why that fight worked so well was because we have had all these story beats that showed us how capable Steve and the Winter Soldier were, then we see them both genuinely struggle to overcome the other.

We can't talk about the final fight without talking about the emotional stakes, and we can't talk about the emotional stakes without discussing what Bucky means to Steve. We already had the "not without you" and the "I'm following the little guy from Brooklyn"; we've also had the "I don't want to kill anyone" turn into "I'm not going to stop until all of Hydra is dead" and the "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn" callback. This movie added the "even when I had nothing I had Bucky" and the "I knew him" and the "he will (know me)" and of course the "end of the line" exchanges.

But there were also more subtle cues -- that came from Steve's frequent rebuff of Nat's suggestions for companionship, the string of betrayals Steve had to grapple with, and Steve's lamentations of guilt and regret and uncertainty. Steve could not deny that he was lonely, but he had 101 excuses for why he could not make new connections. Steve did not know what he's looking for or why he's fighting or how long he wanted to continue, until he found out what was behind SHIELD and, specifically, what Hydra had done with Bucky.

Even removing the shipping angle, the final showdown between Steve and Bucky was unique in superhero movies, even for a friend-turned-enemy battle. It was not like the fight between Tony Stark and Obadiah Stane, or Peter Parker and Harry Osborne, or even Thor and Loki or Charles and Erik -- because there was no ideological divide between Steve and Bucky. Bucky did not and could not believe in the cause he's fighting for - he simply did not have that capacity for choice. The ideological battle was carried by the other characters - between Fury and Nat vs Pierce, between Sam vs Rumlow, and between the rest of SHIELD vs Hydra.

For Steve, his fight was much purer, dearer, and more heart-rending. The final battle held such emotional significance, not just because he's fighting his best friend, but also because his best friend was an unwilling participant in the circumstances. Bucky was Steve's physical equal, but he's also Steve's shared life experience, his tragically failed mission, his unfulfilled childhood promise, his betrayed faith in SHIELD, and the price that was paid for Hydra to grow under SHIELD's nose. This fight offered closure for all of these narrative and emotional threads.

He was also, once again, Hydra's asking price in exchange for the freedom Steve wanted for the world...and Steve so desperately wanted, this time, for that world to include Bucky.

[artkiving]

saw this on twitter so here's my stucky version! reblogs and shares appreciated 🩵

[pedropascll]

Steve + Bucky but they're ao3 tags

[skullfragments]

in honor of the official 10th anniversary of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, i present to you this very accurate self-portrait i sketched in… (checks notes) 2019, of how i spent the first week of that particular summer break from college

@catws-anniversary

[stevefightmerogerss]

longing

𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘣𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘰/𝘰𝘪𝘭 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘳𝘶𝘴𝘩

[astrxxnxmy]

My chaotic thoughts on Bucky in THAT What If episode because I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since I watched it

The scream I let out when Bucky first appeared though 💀

The intense eye contact with Peggy?? The way his gaze was so icy and emotionless while Peggy stared back in shock and sadness and then after, while talking to Howard, her voice shook.

(the drama is juicyy and i am all here for it)

And how he looks down when Hope says "Peter deserves our help as much as anyone." baby :( oh baby no someone give him a hug :(( and the help he clearly needs :(((

"It's just you and me, pal." "There is no me." BUCKY. BUCKY.

"You don't know me." AKSJKSFGHKS (that growl though)

"Steve Rogers did." THE SCREAM I SCRUMPT-- and the way Bucky's eyes widened. He knew, he recognized that name, he remembered, if only a little bit.

"And the man he knew, the friend he loved, would never take that shot." THE FRIEND HE LOVED IM SCREAMING I CANT DO THIS TODAY

PLUS HIS HESITATION JUST AT HEARING STEVE’S NAME GOD

THE WAY HE THEN BROKE FREE FROM THE PROGRAMMING AND WENT ON THE RUN TO REDISCOVER HIMSELF JUST LIKE AFTER CATWS

"The Winter Soldier may be out there, but I'm pretty sure Bucky Barnes is out there with him." 😭❤️

[steveybucky]

For @catws-anniversary April 4th theme To the end of the line. Prompt: helicarrier

Title: You Know Me

Pairing: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers Rating: T Word count: 1130 Warnings: None apply AO3 tags: Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant with Movie: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Helicarrier (Marvel), Recovered Memories, Childhood Memories, Canon-Typical Violence, POV Bucky Barnes

Summary: The mission was there right in front of him, struggling to stand from the pain, but the asset wasn't seeing him. He was seeing someone else. A man who was much smaller. A small child even. He didn’t know why, or what it meant, or what was happening, but the fear of it all was threatening to overwhelm him.

Or the helicarrier scene from Bucky's perspective. He doesn't recognize Steve, because he's remembering someone else.

Notes: This is based on my thought that maybe Bucky didn't recognize Steve, but he was remembering Steve as he knew him for his whole life. Because Bucky only knew Steve as Captain America for around a year and a half, whereas knew Steve as the skinny kid from Brooklyn during his childhood, his teenage years, and his early 20s.

This was originally supposed to be able to be read as plantonic or romantic, but due to the fact that I am Stucky trash, it ended up being an implied established relationship.

[thatmidnightkid]

ich hab keine heimat // i don’t have a home

ich hab nur dich // i just have you

du bist zuhause für immer und mich // you’re home, for ever and me

du bist zuhause für immer und mich // you’re home, for ever and me

ich hab keine heimat, ich hab nur dich. // i don’t have a home, i just have you.

du bist zuhause, für immer und mich. // you’re home, for ever and me.

~ lyrics from oft gefragt by annenmaykantereit

[rillils]

🌸 post-catws stucky + lovers’ kiss

one.

The thing about grief is, it has a habit of dropping by every once in a while, unannounced and insistent like a nosy suburban neighbor.

It’s a contrary little creature. Some days it strikes hard, and crushes Steve’s chest with the brutal force of a frothing waterfall. Sometimes, though, it comes in droplets; little pills that get stuck in his throat for a minute, until he can swallow them down.

Steve doesn’t mind those too much: sure, the aftertaste is bitter – but there’s always a spoonful of honey at hand to help wash it down.

two.

There’s a morning ritual Steve is particularly fond of.

When the coffee has been made, and the first sip taken, he nudges their mugs to the side, and crowds Bucky back against the kitchen counter, arms braced on either side of him to box him in. Bucky watches him come with a knowing grin, a gleam in his eyes that says, well, all right, he’ll let Steve believe that he’s leading this little dance here, just this once.

But it’s Bucky who pulls him in the rest of the way; Bucky who sets his hands low around Steve’s waist, and brings their bodies flush together from hip to knee, delight written in the pretty curve of his lips.

“Hey there, sailor,” he teases. His morning voice is a dark, rich thing, rough around the edges but soft at its core, sweet with that old Brooklyn drawl that brings Steve right back home.

“Hey there, sweetheart,” he chuckles against Bucky’s smiling lips, their breaths warm between them. “Fancy meetin’ ya here.”

It’s a ritual. Aren’t all kisses a ritual? Well-learned steps and a worshipful heart, the motions so ingrained they come naturally to your limbs.

Their mouths brush together, easy. Unrushed, like time will slow down for them if they’ll just deign to ask.

Bucky’s head tilts just so in Steve’s hands, and the kiss opens up, spilling its molten heat on Steve’s tongue, stroking inside to taste him, easy, easy.

It’s a long-practiced dance. If Bucky pushes, Steve will give; if Steve strays to flutter kisses all over Bucky’s bristly cheek, Bucky will grin and chase after him, and steer Steve back towards his lips.

It’s lazy. Uncomplicated. It’s their first conversation of the day, and Steve can just make out the words in the whisper of Bucky’s hair running through the gaps between his fingers; in the hushed rustle of his own t-shirt, when Bucky’s hand slips under the hem and slides warmly up the dip of Steve’s spine, leaving a trail of pebbled skin in its wake.

You’re here, Bucky’s touch says, awed and reverent.

Always, Steve says back, and kisses that vow to Bucky’s lips for Bucky to find later, when he’ll brush his fingertips against it, and the well-loved flush of his mouth, red and sweetly sore, will remind him of this. Of always.

Parting from him is agony, but breathing is an unfortunate necessity in life – so Steve pulls back, though only just enough to drink Bucky in, his arms wrapped snugly around Bucky’s waist to hold him close.

He’s a sight to behold, all soft and loved up and ruffled from Steve’s own hands, his smile like a ripe fruit framed by the fullness of his beard. His eyes crinkle with it, each little crease a testament to his happiness – and Steve knows he’s gonna have to take his time kissing each and every one of those later, or he’ll simply be driven to madness.

He should get to have a whole lifetime of this, Steve thinks – a lifetime to dedicate just to this little pleasure. Seventy years at least, to make up for the seventy years gone by that could have seen them grow old and gray together, but were stolen from them instead – and then seventy years more, ninety, a hundred, as many as his old withering body will stand and breathe for.

This will be his only job: the worship of Bucky’s laugh lines, of the curling wisps of his bedhead, of his eyelashes fanning darkly against the pad of Steve’s thumb. Cherishing this treasure he holds in his hands – the one he once thought gone forever.

There it is now: a little pill lodged in his throat. The cold hand of grief squeezing around his heart again, just for a moment.

Bucky’s palms cup his cheeks, drawing Steve’s gaze up to meet his.

“Hey,” he murmurs, gentler than before, his thumb stroking soothingly over Steve’s cheekbone. “You’ve got your thinking face on. What’s wrong?”

Steve covers Bucky’s hand with his own, turning his mouth to it to kiss the warm, unyielding metal of Bucky’s palm.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he promises, leaning in to nudge to tip of his nose against Bucky’s, like a puppy. “Just busy coming up with an excuse to kiss you some more.”

Bucky’s breath puffs warmly against his lips. “Yeah? Had any luck yet?”

Steve hums pleasantly, “Mm-mmm”, locking his fingers together just above the small of Bucky’s back, and gently sways the two of them from side to side. Bucky snorts, amused, but he allows it; dropping his hands to rest on Steve’s shoulders as Steve rocks them slowly, left to right, right to left.

“Here’s what I think,” Steve rumbles. “I think I ought to give you one kiss for each day we were apart since 1945.”

Bucky stares back at him, his lips parted slightly in surprise. He takes Steve in, wordlessly, studying him from the arch of his eyebrows, to the half-crooked slope of his nose, to the hopeful smile Steve knows he must be sporting right now. There is much left unsaid, Steve can feel its weight hanging in the air between them, recognizes it by taste and sound.

But Bucky’s gray eyes shimmer, nearly crystal-clear, and they fill with the kind of big, heart-twisting emotion that cannot fit under a single label; one that is equal parts ache and tenderness, and Steve understands – his chest feels too-tight around that same ache, too.

“That’s a lot of kisses,” Bucky rasps softly, and his hand skates up Steve’s shoulder to curl over the nape of his neck, herding him one inch closer into Bucky’s space.

“Yes,” Steve whispers, leaning in the rest of the way to mash their foreheads together. He can feel his own heart beat inside his chest, a quick and steady rhythm, and a rushing sense of victory bubbles straight up to his lips, sweet and light as air. “Exactly.”

Bucky laughs, a little wetly, and laughs ever harder when Steve tries to kiss him and gets all teeth and half a nostril instead – his head thrown back and his whole body shaking joyfully, while Steve ducks in to kiss what bristly portion of Bucky’s neck he can reach.

A treasure, Steve thinks.

A treasure in his hands, and forever to hold on to it.

three.

He sits himself down at the table with a sheet of paper, a pen and a calculator, a bunch of dates marked down and circled over and over in the topmost corner.

Bucky watches him from across the room, amused and – Steve believes – a little bit impressed.

“You’re really gonna do this?”

Steve smiles up at him, throwing in one teasing wiggle of his eyebrows for good measure.

“I’m a man of my word.”

It takes nearly a whole hour of focused scribbling before he looks up again, a wide grin lit up like Christmas on his face and a torn piece of paper held up in triumph. “I have the number.”

25109.

Seventy years’ worth of daily kisses.

It’s quite the commitment. It requires dedication. But good things are always worth putting in the work, Bucky tells him, eyes dancing with laughter; and when he settles in Steve’s lap, heavy and warm in Steve’s arms, and brushes their mouths together to claim the first of what he was promised, Steve can’t help but agree.

four.

25109 kisses Steve owes him, and he initiates quite a few; but mostly, he lets Bucky ask for them, when and where the mood strikes him to do so.

When he’s right on the verge of sleep, his face half-swallowed up by his pillow, and he can’t even peel his eyes open long enough to receive his kiss – he just tips his chin up and waits for Steve to scoot closer and find his mouth, drowsily humming in satisfaction.

When he lets Steve slip into the shower with him, and slides his hands up Steve’s chest, sweet and proprietary, and their breaths mingle with the hot steam.

When he’s got his head in Steve’s lap while Steve reads, and Steve’s fingers carding through his hair at leisure; and Steve catches Bucky watching him from under his eyelashes, and trying to hide that private little grin of his, because apparently Steve was silently mouthing the words again without realizing it.

“Kiss me special, Stevie,” he’ll croon, and Steve will know.

And he’ll be all too happy to comply.

five.

Steve is supposed to keep score. He does, too. For the most part.

Once every couple of weeks or so, though, he’ll just so happen to conveniently lose count.

He’ll roll out of bed with singular purpose, and break the tragic news to Bucky over their morning coffee, barefoot and forlorn. Bucky never buys his little sob story, but that never stops Steve from batting his eyelashes at him all prettily, either.

He’ll guide Bucky’s arms to loop around his neck, luring him in, soft and stealthy like a thief, and he’ll mumble real close to Bucky’s lips, “Let’s start over again.”

And Bucky, sweet, merciful, long-suffering Bucky, will accept his fate and be kissed breathless once more, right in front of their placidly steaming mugs.

“There,” Steve will murmur, again, and again, and again. “One down, 25108 to go.”

Oh, one life won’t be enough to see the end of this, no.

And that’s exactly Steve’s plan.

***

little sidenote nobody asked for lol: obviously the number of days/kisses varies depending on when you think the boys were reunited; my wishful thinking headcanon for this specific fic is: post-helicarrier, they find each other again sometime in the fall, 2014. the ficlet is set sometime in late spring 2016, and ignores everything that comes after catws.

[stuckysnugglebutt]

Ok, so I just did a brief A03 search, and I didn't get any hits, so I am presuming this doesn't exist yet.

I'm gonna need someone to write a Captain America and BBC Ghost mash-up. It could be set during CATFA, and the Howling Commandos could be quartered at Button House during R&R in England or between missions for the SSR when they are reporting/coordinating with Col Phillips, et al.

This obviously needs to be a Stucky fic. They could meet the Captain while he is alive and stationed at Button House. This would open up some interesting convos/interaction among the Captain, Stucky, and Havers.

The potential for a time jump to the present day is there as well. Cap (with or without Bucky post WS) could revisit Button House on a mission or to stay at the B&B (or both). Then, he encounters the Captain as a ghost in the present day, which has the potential for a lot of great scenes.

Anywho... there you are writers....a great scenario/writing prompt for you. Go forth and write b/c I need this badly in my life!

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

New chapter is out! Fun fact: I've changed the rating from mature to explicit. The shift does not happen exactly in this chapter, but... you'll see. Enjoy!

[serotinals]

If Captain America: The First Avenger was based on The Thirteen Letters

Video

Pt. 1 & Pt. 3

[charcubed]

10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY JACKET FOR THE WINTER SOLDIER JUST DROPPED

LET'S GOOOOOO STEVEBUCKY NATION!!!!

In case it’s not clear, I made this and I’m selling it. Marvel won’t give us good merch so I did it myself.

Gonna be real, this is (obviously) not how I intended to unprofessionally ~launch~ my silly little shop BUT let's call it a soft launch or something. Because unfortunately I simply CANNOT resist a perfect anniversary date.

There are some other things to be found if you poke around (and I have other things in progress)……. and I will make them their own Announcements in due time 🤭👀

Enjoy horrible photographic evidence under the cut that I have been living in this jacket for weeks and recommend it.