#steve the chill gay dude

[shroomiethefrogwhisperer]

Aliens And Chocolate

in a previous post, I stated that the only species that can eat chocolate safely is Humans! And we love our sweet, cocoa-y bars of the brown/white/black goodness.

but the thing is, everywhere else in the universe, it’s a carefully controlled, highly illegal substance. For some alien species, like the Penaconians and the Ahlmiws, it’s a hallucinogenic, intoxicating drug with severe side effects. For others like the Aakij and Zbbrk, it is a deadly poison.

The thing is, the illegal chocolatiers of the universe have refined their craft, and humans like it more than the chocolate we have. So you have groups of humans who go around to dealers, buying chocolate off of them for their hefty prices. And most aliens don’t know that humans are impervious to the dangers of cocoa! And the humans don’t know it’s illegal, so they’re not even trying to cover it up!

So, you know, there are thousands of intergalactic human criminals who are unknowingly on the run from the space police.

in a galactic jail somewhere

Burakkjian Serial Killer w/ a body count of 5000+: so, what’re you in for?

Literally just an average, everyday human: possession of highly illegal drugs and murder weapons

BONUS:

Karen, eating Nutella straight from the jar:

Steve: *chomps on Hershey bars*

Moss, elegantly eating ferrero rocher like the absolute royalty they are:

Zzgnaru: these are my idiots

Sunday: …they should all be dead or high

Boothill: Yeehaw they fuckin should

Ratio: the odds of them surviving are slim

Sampo: W H A T A R E T H E Y D O I N G A R E T H E Y S U I C I D A L S H O U L D I B E W O R R I E D

Aventurine: Oi, Karen, gimme

Karen, not really paying attention: sure

Ratio and Topaz, in unison: NO

[alittlebitofloveliness]

The Outsiders as Modern Fast Food Employees

Based on stuff I have seen/done at work

-The management very clearly have a 'brand' about who works out front, so stereotypically 'pretty' people are usually interacting with customers and everyone else gets banished to the grill (this is a real thing that happened at my work. We have one token dude who works at the front and the rest of us are all rosy cheeked young girls with long hair. Seriously, put me and most of my female coworkers together we look scarily similar) POINT IS Soda, Ponyboy, and Angela would all get to work front of house

-Steve works grill and he's the coworker everyone likes for no reason, he's just chill and good at what he does and helps out when front of house is swamped without needing to be asked or being a dick about it

-Every fast food place has one good manager and one evil manager (it's a canon event ok) and as long as the evil manager isn't working Steve lets everyone working eat some of the leftover fries before he chucks them each night

-Ponyboy found a mouse in the walk in pantry once and took it home in a cup to keep as a pet. Darry wouldn't let him, so Curly agreed to foster it for him, and now they relentlessly refer to it as 'the baby'. Newly hired coworkers are always confused and a little concerned because are they actually gay teen parents? No, they're just dumbasses, but no one tells the new hires that because it's fun to see how long it takes them to figure out they're cooing about a pet MOUSE not a human child

-Everyone chats and shit talks over the headsets all the time, even though they're not supposed to. Since Curly and Angela speak spanish but no one else does, they shit talk about the evil manager when she's there, and tell her they're talking about their brother if she ever asks what they're going on about

-Sodapop hates working drive through but gets it almost every shift since he's one of the few people trained to do it

-Two-bit is that guy who's technically employed but has like...one scheduled shift a week and still calls in all the time

-Theres a group chat where the schedule gets shared but only Soda and Steve ever use it, and never for it's intended purpose

-Angela can cry on command and anytime a customer starts to complain about anything she immediately bursts into tears. As soon as the customer leaves she stops

-Angela's customer service voice is already high pitched (we love customer service voice woohoo) but when she's working drive through it's so shrill its a wonder anyone can understand her

-Darry has his other jobs so he definitely wouldn't work where the rest of them work but he's that family member that stops by all the time and chates to soda and/or pony for half an hour and everyone else is annoyed 'cause they gotta pick up the slack.

-Dallas also wouldn't work with them because that man could NOT do customer service but him and Tim could drop by all the time and be really nice to the workers but yell at other customers. Someone is letting their kid run wild in the lobby? Tim's scolding that kid AND their mother. Some old guy is bring curt with the staff? Dally's gonna be more than curt to him

-Johnny would be a doordash/skip driver but he's at the store so often that everyone greets him by name and kinda treats him like an honorary employee

[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!”

[ladykailitha]

Just a little angst that I thought of while at work today.

Eddie realizes too late what that look on Steve’s face meant in the forest and later after Vecna is defeated. That look. You know the one. The one that is warm and fond and adoring all at once. Or as Eddie realizes as Steve gives the same look to his new girlfriend, Becca, utterly in love. A look that used to be all Eddie’s. He was the only one that Steve looked at that way. But not anymore.

She’s sweet and lovely and as much as Eddie wants to hate her he can’t, because she likes him, too. She’s everything Steve deserves and more. He can’t even be mad about it.

So Eddie starts to pull away. What else can he do? He can’t watch Steve be with her, it hurts too much.

One night at a party, probably a birthday of one of the kids, one they both have to attend, Eddie is watching Steve and Robin comes up to him to ask him if he’s okay.

He’s not. How could he ever be? He could have had Steve and lost the chance. Robin understands. She offers to cover for him if he wants to go home. And that’s when the room starts spinning. Maybe the feelings aren’t just emotional, maybe he’s coming down with something, too.

Robin offers to take him home and have Wayne drop her off at home on his way to work. She goes to make excuses with everyone and Steve tells her that Eddie needs anything to let him know.

Steve wants to be the one to take him, the protector that he is. But he knows. He has no right. No claim on Eddie. So he lets Robin take Eddie home.

Two days later, Eddie is still sick. Doctors say it’s the flu. He’s miserable and alone and he can’t tell what hurts more, his head or his heart. Wayne has gone to work and Eddie can’t even move at this point. And then he feels a cool hand on his head. It’s safe and it’s comforting. He opens his eyes and sees Steve knelling there, brushing his hair back in soothing motions.

“Where’s...” Eddie frowns. “Fuck, I can barely remember my own name at the moment...girlfriend person...”

Steve chuckles. “Visiting her grandmother in Florida.”

Eddie frowns. “But you’ve only been dating a couple months...why big trip?”

Steve is still smoothing Eddie’s hair. “Goes every year at this time. It’s not a big deal.”

“Could have gone with her?” Eddie asks. His head is starting to feel better with every stroke of Steve’s hand.

“Too early for that, I think,” Steve mutters. “What do you need, sunshine? Let me take care of you.”

Eddie knows he shouldn’t, but he’s sick and he’s tired and needs comfort, so he let’s him. Let’s it slip how he feels about Steve, too. But he doesn’t remember that. 

“Missed you,” he mutters before Steve leaves for the night.

“Missed you too, Eds.”

A week later and Eddie’s feeling better. He wakes up to a knock on the trailer door. When he answers it, there is Steve. Beautiful, wonderful, amazing Steve.

Steve tells him that Becca broke up with him. And Eddie is shocked. He’s even more shocked when Steve is surprisingly chill about it.

“What happened?” Eddie asks once they’re seated on the sofa.

“Apparently her best friend that she grew up with in Florida told her that he loved her and that he always had.”

“So you got dumped because she was in love with this best friend person?” Eddie asks incredulously.

Steve laughs. “It’s okay because I told her I was in love with my best friend, too.”

“Uh...” Eddie says, “Robin’s gay, dude.”

Steve laughs harder. “No! She’s my Platonic soulmate. You’re my best friend, Eds.”

Eddie blinks. “Oh.”

“Oh,” he says again as the realization dawns. And then breaths a sigh of relief when Steve finally kisses him.

 “You absolute menace,” Steve says fondly.

Eddie blushes. “Yeah, but I’m your menace.”

“Yes, you are,” Steve says. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

[shieldofiron]

Vibe Check Part 3: Quid Pro Bro

The Frat Boy Au, Part 3

Read Previous on Ao3 or tumblr.

Steve wakes almost falling out of a chair.

He blinks, looking around the empty lecture hall and then finally looking up at the girl who’s still shaking him.

“Hey, yo, I’m up, I’m awake!” He wriggled out of her iron grip.

“You have to leave.”

“When did I pass out?”

The girl scoffs rolling her eyes hard, “Like halfway through the lecture, dingus. You snore, by the way.”

“I do not!” He snapped. Billy’s never said anything, and they’d roomed together all of last year.

“Oh yeah,” she nodded, crossing her arms. “Drool too.”

Steve just began to gather his books, “Why are you even here? Just let me drool.”

“I’m the TA,” She smirked. “And I didn’t want to be caught grading your absolutely half baked paper.”

“Yeah,” he smirked right back, giving her a little of the patented Harrington sparkle. “A likely excuse.”

She just huffs, heading back to the front of the room and gathering some papers, “you try to help a guy.”

“Want me to walk you home?” He glanced at his watch. “Kinda late.”

“I live off campus.”

“Your car, then.”

She blinks at him, “you’re not getting in my pants.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m gay.”

“And I’m just offering a walk home,” Steve shook his head, “you try to help a girl.”

She pauses, “you’re serious. You don’t have to do that.”

He nods, “yeah I am, dude, it’s like 9 pm. I’m not gonna let you walk home alone.”

She’s pretty, short hair sort of messy around her freckled face, which morphs slowly from a scowl into a more confused expression.

“Okay, I guess.”

“You thought I would just leave you in the lurch?”

“Not-“ She just laughs and shakes her head. “Fine, dingus. Prove to me that frat boys aren’t all the same.”

“We’re not!”

“Your taking a nap during the lecture non withstanding. Like it wasn’t even during a film day.”

Steve massaged the back of his neck, “My neighbor at the house has this girlfriend, she’s like a banshee. We didn’t sleep at all last night.”

She swung a multicolored patchwork tote bag onto her shoulder, “Can’t you just outbang him? Fight fire with fire?”

Steve’s brows rose as he scrambled to shove his notes into his backpack. “Whoah, I didn’t expect you to say that!”

She giggles, “I’m a TA not a nun.”

“Fair enough. How do you get to be a TA anyway?” He holds open the heavy metal door as she sails past, her tote bag hitting him hard in the solar plexus as she did.

“Sorry,” She says. “You take enough of Herman’s classes that he starts to remember your face. It’s a blessing and a curse, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. And the pay is dismal.”

“You get paid too?” He followed her down the hallway and out into the brisk fall air.

“I thought frat boys had all the money for keg parties and togas and house dues and lawsuits…”

“Not all of us,” He scoffs, as if he isn’t absolutely the exact type of guy she’s talking about. “It’s always good to let the brothers know about stuff like this.”

She rolls her eyes, “I can’t believe you actually talk like that.”

“What? Brothers?”

“Yeah,” she raises one shoulder. “Isn’t your boyfriend one of your brothers? Isn’t that a bit creepy?”

At first he thinks it’s the fall wind. That whooshing sound.

“What?” He realizes he’s frozen, locked to the spot in his adidas slides, staring at a tree rather than her.

“Oh,” She falters in her skipping. “Did you two break up?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Uh, I don’t really know his name but he used to walk you to class last semester for Women in Film? Blonde guy with the curls? He has an embarrassing and frankly dated 80s thing going on?” She blinks at him. “God, you did break up. I’m so sorry, Steve.”

“How… wh… we’re not boyfriends,” he finally manages to stutter after a few seconds of autumn-chilled silence.

“Oh,” Her expression morphs into pity and it’s fucking awful. “I get it.”

“No, no I… we’re not like that at all. Billy and I are roommates. We’re…” he couldn’t bring himself to say brothers, his mind still scrambled. “Friends.”

“Oh.” She tips her chin down. “Sorry. My mistake.”

After another stilted second, they start to walk again with purpose towards the parking garage.

But she keeps sort of glancing over at him. Like she’s checking.

“We’re just friends,” He repeats after a moment.

“Got it.”

“Nothing going on there.”

“Okay.”

“And we’re straight.”

“Interesting how that came up last.”

“I’m fucking serious. We’re just friends.”

“Got it. Broken gaydar. It happens,” She shrugs, and he tries to do it too. Just like… no big deal.

But he can’t seem to stop wanting to say it. They’re just friends. How could anyone read them as anything else.

The more he thinks about it the funnier it seems. Of course nothing is going on, it’s so crazy that she thought so. He’ll have to tell Billy, even though the idea makes him feel like he has a nest of angry scorpions in his stomach.

Finally, they turn sharply for the nearest dorm, just past the garage near the theatre building.

“I thought you said you lived off campus.”

“I thought you might be a serial killer. I don’t know which one of us is more disappointed.”

He laughed through his choked throat. “I’m Steve, by the way.”

“I know. You’re Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington. You’re the party chair for Theta House and you’re like,” she puts on a silly high voice, “so cute.”

“And straight.”

“And straight, that too,” she giggles a little nervously. “I’m Robin Buckley. We’ve had classes together for two years.”

He rocks back on his heels, “you did the John Waters short for Dr Casey’s class. That shit was legit.”

“That’s me,” She smiled, “sorry about confusing you and you’re friend earlier. You’re just so… anyway. See you next time.”

“See you next time, Robin,” He says.

The whole way back to the house he can’t shake the feeling. Like a leaf blowing on the back of his leg he’s jumpy, sure he’s feeling spiders and skeletons.

He whips out his phone and dials the first number he can think of. Surely it will all just seem like a joke tomorrow. A harmless mistake.

“Hey,” Billy picks up on the second ring.

And it’s like all the words in the world have dried up in his throat and he can’t speak for the corpses. He just makes a little aborted wheeze.

“Stevie? What’s up?” Billy asks.

“D-do… do I snore?” He asks, not even sure where that came from.

“A little. But it’s cute. Why, is some girl giving you grief?”

Steve is so nervous he just up and disconnects the call. The wind blows at the name of his neck and his whole body breaks out in goosebumps.

[apomaro-mellow]

Got inspired by this

Steve regretted laughing. Which is something he never thought he'd feel. But as he cackled at something Robin said, he saw the look on Dustin's face and wished he could take the laugh back. Robin went to go and show a customer something and Dustin slid over to him.

"Remind me again how she isn't 'the one'?"

"She's a one. One of a kind. The kind I don't wanna lose by asking her out."

"Whatever happened to the Harrington charm?", Dustin asked.

"Doesn't work on girls like Robin." Steve ignored him by trying to escape to the backroom. Of course Dustin followed, employees only be damned.

"I don't even think you've tried. Which confuses me. But what's got me even more confused is how you've seemed to stop trying altogether."

"Why are you so invested in my love life, huh?"

"Ew, gross", Dustin winced. "I'm not invested. I'm just tired of hearing you whine about never finding love-"

"I don't whine!"

"SO just ask her out already. Even if she says no, you can still be friends. Like Jonathan and Nancy."

Steve rolled his eyes. Then saw a lightbulb go off in Dustin's head.

"Well since Nancy's single again-"

"I'm gay!"

For the first time ever Dustin shut his trap. Steve thought he should get a trophy for this. Except he realized what he just said. Dustin, with all the grace of someone who had just been blindsided, hugged Steve tight.

"I'm...I'm here for you, man."

It was so sweet that it made Steve feel like shit. But only a little. Because now Dustin couldn't keep trying to matchmake him and Robin. Or Nancy.

Turns out the love boat only stopped for a couple days.

Steve was hanging out in his room when he heard footsteps approach. Dustin came in without a single knock.

"Um, hello? How did you get in?"

"Some lady let me in."

Steve raised a brow. "You mean my mom?"

Dustin shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Anyway, what about Gary?"

"....Who? For what?"

"Gary? He works at the art supply store. He's gay, why not him?"

Steve shot up and shut his door like a zombie was coming. "What the fuck are you talking about Henderson?!", he hissed quietly.

"Gay people deserve love too, Steve. So how about it?"

Steve rubbed his face. Forget about how Dustin knew about some random dude's sexuality, apparently he wasn't one to be deterred.

"You can't just set me up with any guy. Or any gay guy."

"You've slept around with just any girl? Why are guys different? Seems pretty discriminatory Steve."

He wanted to strangle this kid. More than that though, he wanted to go back and slap his past self. He could have said anything. Said he was into old ladies-no, then Dustin would be sending him on blind dates to the senior center.

It felt like the only thing to get Dustin off his case would be if he was in a serious relationship with someone.

Then a second person came into his room without knocking and Steve wondered if he should be walking around naked more.

It was Jonathan.

And Steve got another bright idea.

"I can't just go out with anyone. Because I'm already dating Jonathan."

"What?!", two voices shouted out and Dustin gave Jon a look.

"Why do you sound surprised?"

Jonathan looked to Steve for help and Steve tried to convey the best he could with his eyes.

"I...we never....put a label on it....?"

Steve could kiss him if he was at all interested in men. To sell it a little better, he put an arm around his shoulders. Dustin was left speechless for the second time in a week and Steve was definitely putting it in his journal for posterity.

This time he gave them both pats on the back and walked out silently.

"Don't tell anyone!", Steve shouted behind him, then closed his bedroom door.

"Hey, um, the hell?", Jonathan asked.

"Thank you for being so cool with that."

"I'm learning to be more chill. But still, explain?"

Steve told him the whole story as they sat on his bed and through it all, Jonathan looked nothing but understanding.

"So, how long do we need to pretend to be boyfriends?"

"Who says we need to pretend?", Steve raised a brow.

"You just told Dustin."

"It's a secret we're keeping", Steve said, getting up to pace about his room. "Which means we just act normal. Later we can tell Dustin we broke up."

"How much later?"

Steve pondered. "....Once I'm engaged?"

"Steve!"

"Jonathan, please?"

He looked conflicted. This just seemed like a lot of stupid work just to convince Dustin. "You get 2 months? Got it? Put it on your calendar."

"Thank you! I'll do it right now!" Steve grabbed a pen and went over to the calendar that hung on the wall. He went to February 3rd and put a broken heart on the date.

"Subtle."

"No one else looks at this thing. Alright. If our break up is bad enough maybe Dustin will stop butting his head in."

"What if the others find out?", Jonathan asked.

"No one else is gonna know."

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

Lucas had been noticing that Dustin had that weird grin on his face for the past week. The 'I know something you don't know' grin. While sitting in Steve's living room, shoulder to shoulder with Max, who he nudged.

"You notice anything off with Dustin?"

"You mean more than the usual offness? Yes, actually."

"What do you think it is?", Lucas asked.

Will came to sit on Lucas' other side. "My guess is he has a secret. But what, I don't know."

"So it's pretty obvious, right?", Lucas said.

"No, I said as much to Mike and he said I was being crazy and that Dustin wouldn't keep anymore secrets after Dart."

Their eyes went over to Dustin, who was grinning at the group who was deciding on the movie they were gonna watch. Steve and Eddie were in a heated conversation while Jonathan was trying to be a mediator.

Steve was flapping around a vhs so hard it threatened to sail across the room and Jonathan grabbed his wrist to still it, scared for the innocent movie.

"Get a room, you lovebirds", Dustin called out.

All eyes turned towards him.

Part 2

[piratefishmama]

i think i need at least one fic where some of the kiddie party need a bit of time to process Steve being not entirely straight, and dating Eddie. Like. They're not against it. But they're clearly so very not accustomed to the idea that it's just... kind of jarring for them.

Steve has always been a ladies man to them, a beacon of 'straight alpha male' masculinity.

Mike would probably be the most vocally baffled, cause he's dealing with a lot of confusing feelings about himself and doesnt understand how a guy can like girls and guys without it being some kind of insult to the girl, like "how could you be gay when i caught you climbing into my sisters room, do you think she looks masculine or something?" like he's offended FOR his sister because he doesnt understand.

Lucas would be pretty chill about it, Erica wasted no time in accepting that her brother could be dating a dude, so they've likely been raised to accept things easier, to show support.

Dustin's the worst though and the impact of his reaction is the worst, he's so SURE about so many things, he's so set in his certainty of so much that he's still not let the Robin thing go, so he'd probably struggle to accept it at first. Not because it's wrong, not because he thinks it's wrong, but because it's so very much not what he expected that he's just constantly questioning the validity of it.

like the others are fine, but i bet Mike, and unfortunately Dustin, would be the worst.

[the-martyrfication-of-the-matron]

Let's goooooo. I am going to try and frame it like a reddit post for sheer boredom. (Still no power due to 95mph wind tornado. It is 79F° and I am so sweaty)

r/gaydrama My Mom and I think my Brothers BFF is gay for him, and we don't know what to do.

I, W(19FTM), have a brother G(17 almost 18M) and a close family friend/basically adopted brother M(18M). G and M have been friends for years, and the biggest joke between the two of them is that they are married for tax benefits. They are CLOSE and make jokes about how they are married a lot.

The problem is, both are straight, or at least claim to be. My brother, G, is definitively straight. He is incredibly comfortable with his sexuality, makes jokes about being the only straight sibling, does all of the "I DO KISS MY HOMIES GOODNIGHT!" jokes, and all in all a pretty solid cishet white dude. G even has a LOT of gay friends, with one of his closest friends being a really attractive gay man who G says "Even if I was gay, I wouldn't date him because he is too good for me.". (He is too good for all of us.)

G is so comfortable in his sexuality that he takes getting hit on by gay men as a compliment, and given how he looks like a young Matthew Lillard, it happens a lot. (I think the last count was at 42 different times. He keeps track to bully his gay friends that he can pull more tail than them). I am bringing this all up because M is not as comfortable. He is alright with compliments from gay men as long as they are a stereotype but he is ultimately a classic dude.

M played football, he did powerlifting, and he even works on cars. He is a full-on stereotype. These are all of his genuine interests too, but he does have a rather large habit of playing this up, especially in front of openly queer me. He does occasionally try to out man me, but in a way that screams, he is insecure about himself and not transphobic. I always thought that he was just insecure in his masculinity, but my mom and I have recently found that it may be a bit more.

An important factor I need to point out is that G has a girlfriend, who he has been dating for a few months now. Girlfriend (E 16 almost 17F) is super chill with M and even jokes about how M is G's side piece. A Me and You and your friend Steve type of situation.

The other day I spent the entire day with G and M and we were later joined by E and OH BOY. M was fully jealous of E the entire night. Everytime the two went off to vibe alone you could kind of sense it. Doesn't help the fact that M was trying to pick up girls (while calling them Females I might add) and they could even sense it.

To make matters worse, M asked us about why he can't ever keep a girl and while listing his standards IT WAS LITERALLY JUST A GIRL VERSION OF MY BROTHER! No joke and E and I in the back seat even shared a look. I talked to my mom about it later and she even said "YOU NOTICED IT TOO!"

Yeah, so my brothers best friend is in love with him but my brother is fully straight.

There’s a whole ‘Gay 4 best friend’ sitch with one of my brothers. Or there was. But my brothers the gay one. Both of my brothers are gay. And closeted. And I feel it in my bones.

This is the rugby lad brother I hate not the one that has delayed dramatic homophobic reactions to gay kiss scenes in tv.

But he basically had a best friend who my dad was like ‘he’s your boyfriend isn’t he?’ And my brother went ‘nooooo😚😚😚’ but my family just proceeded to treat this guy as if he were my brother’s boyfriend anyways. And he… WAS. Like there’s no way they WERENT??? Like my brother is GAY, and that’s not even speculation like it is with my other brother, we have proof that he’s gay bc he’s a little perv and was trying to get nudes from my sister’s best friend (who’s a guy), but even if we didn’t have proof— HE INVITED THIS GUY ON FAMILY HOLIDAYS AND STUFF. AND THEY WERE A LITTLE TOO SUSPECT ABOUT SHARING A ROOM. And idk what happened exactly but they had a very messy ‘friendship’ break up that I’m p sure was bc my brother was a little too invested in their ‘friendship’. And to this day I don’t know if it was mutually gay or if my brother is just so gay, he made his best friend look gay for just being near him, but either way…

[supercap2319]

Steve and bucky overhearing peter and chubby male reader discuss if they think Steve and bucky are together and how they think their sex life is

It was wrong to eavesdrop, but it was kind of hard to ignore when people were talking about you and your best friend. Steve and Bucky overheard Y/N and Peter talking about them as they listened to what they were saying.

"Look, I'll I'm saying is two dudes chilling in a hot tub not five feet apart. I think Mr. Rogers and Mr. Barnes are a couple." Came Peter's voice.

"You think so?" Y/N asked. I mean I could see them being gay for each other. The question is. Who do you think tops and bottoms?"

"For sure Mr. Rogers is the top. I mean have you seen his massive muscles?" Peter said.

"I think Mr. Barnes is the top. I mean his metal arm. I bet he's good at handjobs and fingering." Y/N said.

Steve and Bucky were shocked to hear all this, but strangely turned on. Maybe they should grant them their wish.

[stranger-rants]

i try not to stereotype but its always wild to me when antis say billy would call them a slur while openly having steve as their fave or being a st//eddie because like,,,,,,

steve is the rich jock in the 80s, his parents 100% have membership to the country club, im like 90% sure theyd support reagan considering their financial situation, his dad loves a good game or tennis or even badminton if he wants to be a bit spontaneous, they definitely shop at whatever the us version of waitrose is, his parents have their own person tailor and if their outfits arent at least $100 they wont be wearing them outside and that extends to steve, they have definitely either used a slur and/or done that weird talking around it the "oh you know, those people who prefer embroidered tea cosies" or whatever.

like i dont want to say that steve would just parrot whatever his parents say and would just internalise their opinions, because obviously thats not true on most cases. but at the same time, theres a lot of psychological studies showing that kids do learn from their parents.

and weve already seen steve calling someone a slur on screen. i cant remember if it was queer or faggot, but he was also parroting the rhetoric that gay men are predators who prey on young boys. like where the fuck else did he get that rhetoric from? and even if it wasnt his parents, steve seems to have believed it enough to remember it and parrot it back at jonathan.

id like to think that steve wouldnt call me a slur, especially post-s3 steve, but its fucking wild to me that the "billy would call me a slur" crowd entirely ignore the everything about steves character.

like im sorry buddy, but if pre-s3 steve saw me, a trans man with tits too large to bind who goes out of his way to look as queer as possible, im pretty sure hed call me a whole myriad of slurs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ meanwhile i dont think billy would because hes a cis dude who purposefully presents more feminine. wed probably just have a chill conversation about judas priest or id introduce him to soda stereo.

and anyway its not like know if steve agrees with his parents or not since he never gets any development whatsoever now that hes relegated to group mom

Everyone learns from their parents in one way or another. Steve called Jonathan “Queer” which is what makes it so ironic that fans claim he’s such a great ally and/or that Billy would hate crime them. Quite honestly, given the amount of homophobic rants I have to hear from teenager boys on a regular basis in the year 2023, it wouldn’t shock me if any of the beloved male characters were homophobic. I don’t see Billy as being more or less understanding, but I do think Billy just doesn’t care enough about other people to be out there committing hate crimes. The only time Billy cares what other people say or do is when it puts him at risk

[memes-saved-me]

Billy watches as Steve slips through the crowd, eyes red and hand covering his nose and mouth until he's out the front door and gone. He's far too drunk, way too on edge to deal with his unattainable mission of the night to walk right out the door before midnight even hits. His plan to corner him alone, get him riled up enough to make Steve do something about it a very dumb one but the rejection before the question is enough to send Billy to the punch ball that Wheeler herself had taken full advantage of by the state of her stumbling out of the hallway.

Two cups down and whatever had been mixed in that bowl was doing wonders because the room was losing focus and the anger in his limbs was gone, replaced by the need to get fucked by someone before the night was up. Harrington was a lost cause but someone in this hell town had to be gay enough to accept a drunken hole in a quiet room.

That's when he sees him. Bare, meaty chest exposed to the crowd of wasted teens swaying with a smile that sent a rush of warmth through him. Arms of a wrestler, thick and raised in the air as he starts to make his way off the make shift dance floor of the living room area. Before Billy even realised he was walking he was following him down the hallway towards what he guessed was the bathroom and sure enough he turned to glance at Billy and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Dude, can I help you?" he asked seeming pretty sober but Billy wasn't able to tell.

"Maybe," Billy grinned and to his surprise the boy in the kilt smiled back.

"You're new? Are you the Cali boy people are talking about?"

"Maybe."

"Is that the only work you know," he laughed. It was deep but sweet.

Billy stopped himself from saying it again but the two of them shared another laugh. This time though, he stepped closer to Billy and touched the collar of his leather jacket.

"Terminator or an excuse to be shirtless?" he asked.

Billy stepped even closer and slipped a finger into the waist band of his kilt. "I'd ask you the same but I don't know any scottish movies."

When they laughed Billy glanced at the bathroom door only a few feet from where they were standing and he must have got the idea because next thing Billy knows, he's being pulled his his jacket inside and the door is locked.

He pushes Billy against the sink, eyes burning into his body as his strong hands run up his beer and sweat covered torso before stopping to unzip his jeans and pull them down. No underwear as always so his half hard dick springs free just as he watches the kilt shift on its own...

Without a word Billy turns around and lets his jeans fall to his ankles, the cold surface of the counter sending a chill over his warm skin but before he can even get a purchase on the marble he feels hands spreading his cheeks and spit hit his hole.

"Fuck me," he breathes and sure enough kilt boy pushes himself inside without question.

More prep would have been better but Billy wants it too bad to care, he'll deal with it tomorrow and oh boy he will because he's thick. He feels himself being stretched as his hands hold his hips in place, his own dick trapped against the cupboard below.

The rest is a blur of strong hands, watching the expressions on his face in the mirror and finally the weight of this big boy on him as he comes deep inside satisfying Billy's final mission of the night. He's too drunk to finish himself but the look the boy in the kilt gives him as he pulls up his jeans and turns around is enough for now.

"That was the hottest thing I've ever done," he smiles as sweat rolls down his chest. "We gotta do that again."

"Maybe," Billy smirks and buttons his fly before turning to open the door.

"Before you go, what's your name?"

"Billy."

"Charlie."

"I'll see you at school then, Charlie."

[shroomiethefrogwhisperer]

It’s a pretty average day aboard the ship. Karen is high off her ass, Moss is trying to make friends with the feral ratbirds that live in the pipes, and Steve is trying to teach Bastier (the newest crew member) how to juggle.

Zzgnaru walks through the ship with a deep sense of satisfaction. None of the humans have said anything weird lately, nothing’s caught on fire for weeks, and Karen’s almost out of drugs. That won’t be a problem at all in a few days!

As xey pass the common room, xey hear Steve talking to his boyfriend, Josh, and Bastier. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna buy a few new skins. My current one feels kinda lame.”

Zzgnaru immediately feels like xey’ve heard something xey weren’t supposed to. Xey retreat to the bridge, where Moss and Karen sit with Amethyst (a Penaconian), Douri (an Aaki), and Banana, Moss’ current situationship, braiding each other’s hair. Karen takes one look at xir face, and excuses herself.

“Zzgnaru, hon, what’s up?” She asks, walking with xem through the corridors. “I heard Steve tell Josh and Bastier that he was going to purchase some flesh,” xey explain. Karen gives him a confused look, and asks, “Do you remember exactly what they said? Because Steve doesn’t strike me as a serial killer or a dude who’d like human taxidermy.”

Zzgnaru thinks for a moment, and then says, “I believe that he said he was going to ‘buy some new skins.’ Josh and Bastier seemed to think this was completely normal.” Karen stops, and just stares at him for a second. Then she bursts into laughter. “Oh, Zzgnaru, bae, they were talking about video games. ‘Skin’ is slang for the outfit your character is wearing. It’s not actual flesh,” she crows. Zzgnaru sighs in relief. “Thank the universe. I thought I was going to have to call in the authorities.”

Karen just laughs harder. “You know you wouldn’t. I mean, I’m literally in possession of highly illegal drugs all the time, Moss is a stalker, and Amethyst and Banana have blackmailed almost everyone on our ship- and others- at least once.”

Zzgnaru sighs in resignation. She’s right, though. Xey’re not about to sell out xir crewmates.

[therealpontius]

For the fan fic requests: Steve-O and Pontius are on a camping trip or a Wildboyz thing. They have to share a tent and things get spicy

This might be alittle different than you asked and might not be so good sorry 😭

Plot: things get wild with the wildboyz

Warnings: drug misuse, violence, withdrawl,blood,NSFW

"Fuck sake!" Steve-o complained. As a punishment for being too hungover to even film for wildboyz that day, jeff gave the boys a tent and left them next to a random road that had a forest next to it were they could set up a camp.

Chris was obviously pissed but took the punishment better than steve-o who threatened to call the police multiple times. "Im going to call the cops!" He would groan through gritted teeth "cmon o' chill and help me set up"

It was already late so the boys had no plans other than to just go to sleep. "No fucking cuddles, im not gay" steve-o hissed while chris crawled into the cosy tent with him. "Stop being a douche, this isnt that bad when you really think about it" "yeah how? No chicks, no drugs, no anything!" "Yeah but you got me?" Steve-o just scoffed "im NOT a fruit" chris back hand hit him on the head "shut up and stop being so fucking negative" steve-o went into shock since he had never heard his friend be so aggressive but quickly broke out of it. "What the fuck!" He got up and straddled chris's waist, punching his face.

The withdrawal was getting on steve-os nerves more than he would like to admit. It had been hard for him to concentrate on anything all day, his body was shaking sometimes and he would get constant cold sweats making him feel ill. The last thing he needed was his 'buddy' being pissed at him.

"Shit!" Chris panicked, grabbing the scrawny mans wrists in a tight grasp to stop him from beating him up. "Let go of me you idiot!" He fought against him, chris could feel the blood from his lip roll down his cheek " you fucking hurt me you prick! Im bleeding! If i let go of your hands youll try kill me again!" Chris raised his voice, stopping steve-os angry squirming "fine ill stop" he rolled his eyes, chris reluctantly let go of his wrists.

Steve-o stayed put on his torso, making himself comfy right on his crotch "is it okay?" "Yeah its fine. What the fuck got into you?" Steve-o groaned in response, not wanting to talk about his withdrawal or even talk about himself at all. "Just needing some coke" chris let out a small giggle, not meaning to offend him "damn so i have blood allover me because of some drugs?" Without thinking he rested his hands on steve-os thighs "im sorry dude.. i really dont know why i done that" chris rubbed his thumbs in circles trying to sooth his friend.

Steve-o noticed this but decided not to say anything, it felt so good and he didnt want him to stop. He had had a crush on chris for god knows how long but had been too scared to admit it.

"Quite comfy?" Chris asked, referring to steve-o overstaying his welcome on his lap "oh shit sorry" purposely he grinded against chris while alwardly trying to get off him.

Chris had also had a crush on steve-o for awhile but didnt want things to go sour between them if steve-o didnt feel the same. When steve-o dismounted him and grinded against him he felt himself already getting hard.

Chris moved to his side to take his mind off steve-o sitting ontop of him, when he lay on the secret stash of weed he hid in his underwear for when steve-o was sleeping "what was that?" Steve asked, turning to face chris "nothing..." "you got food?" "No?" "Cause if you are eating, im hungry so" "its not food o' i swear, go to sleep" "is it fucking drugs?" Chris went silent to ponder what reply to give him "are you fucking kidding me on? Where the fuck is it?" Steve-o raised his voice "fuck sake! Its mine!" "But im having withdrawal! I could die dude" with a loud groan chris sat up, putting his hand into his boxers. Eventually he pulled out a small plastic bag that held a blunt and he flung it in between the two who sat with their legs in a basket "no lighter?" "Fuck sake" chris grumbled, unzipping his bag and pulling out the penis shaped lighter "fucking freak" steve-o mumbled, opening the small plastic bag to steal the blunt.

"You better share" chris added as the skinny man unzipped the tent and sat at the opening to keep himself dry but not make the tent musty. He took a long draw of it, enjoying the blazing feeling down his throat "auuu fuck, thats it" chris rolled his eyes, still lying down on the bed, steve-o sitting infront of him. "You want abit?" He offered, passing him the blunt "yeah.." after a draw he passed it back, steve-o scanning his face "whats wrong with you?" "What do you thinks wrong with me?" Both the men paused for a moment "your on your period?" "Fuck off" chris giggled, unintentionally. "Then what the fucks wrong dude?" "You stole my night time weed and your being a dick, im litterally bleeding as we speak" chris said referring to his cut that had not yet healed "were? From your vagina?" Steve-o shot back in a witty manner, making them both laugh. "I cant ever stay mad at you, you know me too well" "and thats why you love me so much" steve-o added to test the waters, passing the blunt back to chris. Chris lay his hand on the inside of steve-os thigh "thats why i love you.."

Softly chris glided his hand closer and closer to steve-os growing bulge, soft whimpers falling from o's mouth. Wordlessly chris handed the blunt that was almost finished back to steve, cupping his bulge with his big hand as soon as he placed it in his mouth. He let out a loud groan, chris scanning the side of his face carefully while moving his hand up and down the fabric of his boxers. Steve-o passed the blunt back "you finish" once chris grasped the blunt steve-o turned round and straddled him again, making sure his bulge was rested against is friends. While chris continued to smoke, puffing the air into o's face, steve-o grinded his bulge off chrises like a desperate dog "you look so pretty when your desperate for me" chris praised, his voice deep with lust in a way steve-o had never heard before.

Chris crushed the blunt onto the grass and flipped steve-o over effortlessly, sitting on him the way he was only seconds ago. Chris continued to pull both their boxers down, steve-o staring at him in either fear or confusion "are we really doing this?" He asked timidly "unless your not wanting to then fuck yeah" "yeah dude just get on with it". Chris looked down and admired the sight of both their hard cocks resting against the other .With his thumb and pointer finger he created a circle shape, moving it up and down just over steve-os tip. A soft grunt left steve-os lips that was probably more from surprise at the sudden sensation. "You like that?" Chris teased with a grin, steve-o just arched his back.

He stopped his teasing movements and leaned over to kiss him "HEY DUDE! NO?" Steve-o spat like their cocks werent literally touching "what are you so afraid of?" Chris asked seductively, rolling his hips forward to rub himself against the skinny man that looked up at him with suddenly soft eyes "fuck.. nothing just..." he trailed off, closing his eyes in bliss while chris continued to rub himself off his cock. While the opportunity was there, chris bent down again to kiss steve-o but this time he didnt swat him away and make a fuss. He pushed against his lips greedily. "Fuck, you changed didnt you?" "Chris just touch my cock before i decide to hate you again!" Steve-o playfully raised his voice, pulling away from the kiss.

Chris obliged, wrapping his hand around both of their cocks, sliding his hand over just the top. A loud groan slipped from steve-os mouth "oh fuck dude...thats incredible" "mhm..." chris groaned. He looked down at steve-o admiring how gorgeous he looked, god why cant he do this everyday.

The two continued like this for another minute before steve-o couldnt stop moaning, loud and gutteral only turning chris on more "fuck dude.. im like so fucking close" "same...your shirt, lift it so it doesnt get stained. Without hesitation steve-o ripped his own shirt off, dick twitching in chris's hand. "Jesus.. i cant... wait anymore" "just let go.. cmon" with a loud exaggerated moan steve-o came alover his chest, chris very shortly came too at the sight and the overwhelming pleasure.

Short panted breaths were the only noise that filled the air, the realisation finally hitting steve-o "dude, cmon get off, i need to wash" he sounded upset with himself, desperate to run away from this situation. Im not really gay right? Chris stripped his shirt off and started cleaning their mixed mess off his stomach, aware of his regret. "Why did you ruin your shirt?" "I dont know.. just wanna make sure your clean" steve-o scoffed but looked up at him in appreciation "thanks..."

They lay back down in silence "you dont regret it do you?" chris asked, feeling guilty "yeah i do. Im not gay" steve-o bit, turning round to face chris "no one said you were, stop getting uptight we are best friends". Did he just friend zone me? "Just cmon, no one needs to know" chris noticed something outside catching steve-os eye behind him"what? What is it?" Chris turns round to face where steve-o was looking to be met with a very small red light "what the fucks that?" He jumped up and ran for it, it was a camera, a small hidden camera that was facing the tent. "Oh shit.." steve-o mumbled.

They spent a whole hour trying to delete their now sex tape from the camera but were unsuccessful, it had been determined that it was one of theirs from the wildboyz sticker that sat at the bottom"i cant let jeff see this, no fucking way" steve-o growled, resting his head in his hand "we will just say that it got lost. Some animal came by and ran with it"

The whole night was silent from then on. Chris slept like a baby but steve-o got absolutely none, tossing and turning, not exactly regretting it but uncomfortable with himself.

The boys woke up to jeff blowing an air horn inbetween their heads, both of them jumping and staring at jeff like they wished death on him “wake up sleepy heads we gotta head” the crew had started lifting their luggage to the van so that they didnt take forever to pack it. “Too early, too fucking early” steve-o grumbled “whats wrong boys busy night?” Jeff smirks making both theirs face’s go red, he then proceeded to take the camera from under steve-os pillow. He smiled at their plum coloured faces “live camera…”

[veiledpurple]

Omg @junimoodi I accidentally deleted the ask/posted too early sksksks but here you are!! The baseball champion team!

Sakura!

-Great leader. Gets the team together to practice, and oftentimes has them for dinner

-Loves pink and all things cherry blossom.

-Has a little shih tzu named Yuki

-When not playing baseball she likes taking naps and watching Netflix

-Incredibly buff holy cr*p

Nick

-He wasn't very good at first, but Sakura trained him to where he is now

-Infodumps about his interests when appropriate

-Loves Sakura's dog

-Likes playing catch in his free time

-Pretty chill dude

Miyu

-Loves singing j-pop

-Announces at other sporting events! Very fast paced and enthusiastic

-Zoomies, great for running the bases

-I see her as being early 20s

-Loves babysitting and wants to be a mom!

David

-The Dad Friend

-Very laid back and gentle

-likes bowling

-Gay but doesn't talk about it much

-When a teammate is hurt he's the first to render aid

-Lets little girls style his hair

-Very romantic

Maria

-Middle aged mom friend

-Lesbian

-Does Miyu's hair

-A little bossy but it's necessary sometiems

-Really good cook

Helen

-Sort of cranky but ig we get that

-Lives with Maria, oh my

-Has a second job and is the manager, do not Karen her

-Likes stew for some reason

Steve

-A literal dad. He has kids. He's always gushing about them.

-the kind of guy to have an office job

-Makes lots and lots of dad jokes

-Gives Miyu headpats

-makes a mean BBQ

Pierre

-Kind of a butthole but for good reason

-Doesn't talk too much

-Too busy simping for Misaki

-Gives his all in practices and games

Takumi

-Pretty positive outlook on life

-Has a huge crush on David and is HORRIBLE at hiding it

-Tries to bowl to impress him

-likes seafood a lot

-Gives pep talks to the team before games

[rocksandmirrors]

Eda: I’m the hottest. A milf, criminal, and have you SEEN my harpy form?!

Steve: I am just some guy™️

Me: SOME VERY HOT GUY

LITERALLY LIKE he's just some dude. he's that chill coworker who you befriended after 2 hours of working together. he's that cool kid you used to know in high school and tried to be a rock star as he grew up (and failed). he's the neighbor's son who babysat you for a day like 15 years ago.

he's just So Normal™ but idk. he's hot ASASHD

(Eda too tho, i'm gay but she deserves some love too <3 her harpy form like. DAMN MA'AM)

[shieldofiron]

Jason as a secret Narnia nerd, if Eddie finds out it basically be like that scene with Dustin and Erica about my little pony. Like dude you are a nerd. Like he has tons of copies of the books in his room. It was the only fantasy series his super religious family would ever let him read. Its probably why he has such a love for lions. He sees himself as basically like Peter, but he is an Edmund. And like he was obsessed(had his first gay crush) with Prince Caspian (he later has fantasies about Steve and Eddie Munson looking all Prince Caspian). I bet he does this nerdy thing in his head were he thinks of some of his closest friends as like some of the characters. Also when Eddie finds out! Ooooo all the Narnia in the closet gay jokes!!

Ok but also Eddie would be like… you know CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien were like, good friends. Just saying.

Jason gets chills when Eddie reads The Hobbit out loud to him. It was just a dare but… he’s kinda hooked now.