#writing off dreams bc 'they're just dreams' and talking about them in a vague way even to your queer friends | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

justavengeit · 6 years

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Your about page says that 'tumblr user justavengeit is like if bucky barnes started writing fic' and it made me think of like. Like Bucky started writing really fluffy Tony StarkXReader and WinterIron fics and they're really popular 'n just like. Trying so hard not to let on that he has a crush on Tony and is in fact writing a whole bunch of fanfics about him lol

I’m cryin bc like, there must be so much Avengers fanfic and no one knows for sure how they feel about it but like Tony has a love-hate relationship with it. When he’s not being hassled about Stark Industries or iron man, the paparazzi and interviews love to bother him about the fanfic. Most of it he just makes cracks about, and he kind of gets a sick kick out of MSTing tony-bashing fics (even though it’s kind if crushing at the same time, I mean, the characterization)

And then there’s ship fic. And most if it’s harmless. He’s a bit perturbed by the amount of hatefuck fic featuring him and steve, but when asked about it mostly just says about how it’s healthy that the authors are working out their urges in a safe fashion or this and the other. He’s a bit annoyed about how pathetic those fics characterize him, but ultimately, it’s fiction, whatever, right?

And that’s when the upward surge of winteriron starts to make itself known.

“What,” he says when Pepper mentions it to him (she may no longer be his PA but she still keeps a better eye on what the media and popular opinion about him is that he does).

“Don’t ask me, I don’t know where they got the idea for it,” she says.

They should have no ideas about it is the thing, because Iron Man and the Winter Soldier have nothing to do with in another. They barely exist on the same public sphere. War Machine works with the Winter Soldier more that Iron Man does. It’s not like it’s entirely intentional - but it’s also not unintentional. Tony more or less stays away from Bucky in public, because he’s pretty much the public face of the Avengers and lots of attention makes Bucky’s trigger finger itchy.

After a few days, FRIDAY has more or less tracked the rise of ‘Winteriron,’ and funnily enough, although there has always been some fic about the pair of them since Bucky was first discovered to be around and kicking(Tony isn’t surprised, people will pair him with literally anyone; there’s a whole community dedicated to writing him in a relationship with fictional characters from the Dragonriders of Pern to Supernatural), one author in particular has given rise to the popularity of the ship. Which is. You know. Whatever.

Or it should be whatever. If Tony can shrug off the massive amounts of ironcaptain fiction without it impacting how he works with Steve, he should be able to do the same with Bucky. Not even the most epic winteriron fic even approached the word count of all the ironcaptain fics. He doesn’t even read any of them, unlike the other fics about him and his friends, coworkers, enemies, and even Justin Hammer. For good reason, really. Tony still isn’t entirely sure how he feels about Bucky Barnes given everything, but he knows asking him to leave Bucky alone would be like trying to put out an oil fire with water. It’s just lucky that Bucky doesn’t seem to be bothered by him, for all that he’s a lot quieter and warier around Tony than the rest of the team.

It’s a situation that Tony decides requires vigorous willful ignorance.

Unfortunately, the surge in popularity won’t let him get away with that. A few months later, he gets cornered by an interviewer who had previously checked with him if he was fine with the whole fanfic thing being touched on, and even with examples put up on the the screen. Tony, accustomed to this coming up often enough given the drama of celebfic, says sure.

“So tell me,” the host says, “what’s your opinion on the SS Winteriron.”

Tony, on live television, manages to actually stall out. “Uh,” he says after a second too long - he can tell by the subtle widening if the host’s smile and eyes - “well, I think that’s probably an interesting variation on the whole ‘American icon seduces Soviet agent’ theme that’s been popular ever since the beginning of the Cold War.”

The host laughs. “You’re talking about Star-Crossed, right?”

Tony shrugs with a smirk. It’s a lot more poetic than most of the handle-smushing names that usually get assigned to pairing. Slightly more obscure, he guesses - it only makes any sense after the connection between Bucky’s red star and Steve’s white is made. “Well, that’s the obvious one, right?”

“That’s right. But that’s actually not the usual theme of the stories that get written about you and the Winter Soldier.”

Tony nods along, even though he has no way of knowing that. This is being aired live on national television, and so, a bit desperately given that he usually jokes about the fanfic with the victim in question before talking about it on TV, he says, “I actually haven’t read any of it myself.”

He deeply resents the way the host’s face lights up. “Really,” she thrills. “Well, let’s get your reaction in real time.” She turns, gesturing to the screen slightly offset from the chairs.

With no little dread and resignation, Tony twists in his chair to see the excerpt from the fic they’ve chosen. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve carefully selected some of the more - racey content to throw in his face. He quickly skims the paragraph, sharply aware of the cameras fixated on him to capture every muscle twitch he might give in response.

It’s thankfully nothing explicit - he’s honestly a bit surprised to see that this appears to be a scene where fic-Tony is working on fic-Buck’s arm. It wouldn’t even be exceptionally shippy if not for the way the narrative lingers lovingly on fic-Tony’s eyelashes and mouth, the focus fic-Tony pays to his job while cracking an awkward joke. The narrative, clearly written from fic-Bucky’s perspective, is smitten.

Tony is vaguely aware that the tips of his ears are burning as he falls back into his chair with a devil-may-care expression. “Well, I can’t really vouch for the accuracy of that characterization, if the nation’s favorite freezer pop is that poetic it certainly doesn’t show, but -” he aims his best doe-eyed look of adoration at the camera, “if the author of that story would like to hit me up for a date, I am all yours.”

The host laughs, and that easily, the balance of power tips back in Tony’s favor. He spends the next several minutes cracking jokes and charming the host and the audience, and as soon as his time is up, Tony beats a swift retreat. Live, national television. What a disaster. If Bucky happened to catch that - and Tony is sure he did, Bucky watches all of their appearances on TV, he gets nervous when he can’t keep track if the team - then he has some desperate damage control to do, probably. Bucky’s adjusting well to the future, but the idea of people writing about him, even fictional stories for their own indulgence, will probably freak him out.

Tony is doing a great job of appearing calm and collected when he shows up to the Compound, but Natasha takes one look at him and says, “he did, and right now he’s looking for the highest possible roof available to jump off of.”

“What,” Tony says, “why? Why are you so calm about this? You should be stopping him!”

She gives him a very pitying look. “He’ll be fine.” She pops a bright raspberry into her mouth as Tony moves by her, already pretty sure he knows what roof Bucky has picked. “That detail about the workshop display screen was interesting, wasn’t it?”

Tony barely acknowledges the remark. At least until he’s already left the lobby far behind and then it clicks. No one should know about a detail like that. Not anyone who hadn’t been inside the workshop in the first place, anyway, which narrows the possible authors down considerably unless there’s been a leak and - oh.

Apparently he has someone he needs to invite down for arm maintenance - and this time he’s not taking ‘in your dreams’ as an answer.

side b now included

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piratekenway · 2 years

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STAR!

from this chapter of hold on i still need you:

Eddie closes his eyes. Moments later, or at least it feels like moments to him, he opens them again to find himself standing outside a squat black building, with IMPROV COMEDY CLUB printed in large, Hollywood-style letters where he can’t miss it.

there's a real club named the Improv over in LA, actually! because I like to have a level of verisimilitude to my modern-day-based works, I went ahead and looked up the actual club's exterior on Google. this is exactly what it looks like on the outside.

It’s a hot summer’s day. He can practically feel his feet cooking even in their sensible shoes. It’s not a hard decision to make, between the club and the sun—he goes inside, because at least the club probably has drinks and air conditioning. Sure enough, he’s blasted with cold air the second he walks inside the—the empty building.

Well. Of course it’s empty. It’s a dream. Eddie ducks into one of the side bars to find Richie sitting there at the counter, wearing Eddie’s old jacket, the red one he lost in the sewers. It hadn’t hid the blood as well as it ought to have, turning dark with it and soaking through onto Eddie’s hand.

Eddie's cardigan jacket in the movie is much more absorbent than Richie's leather jacket.

“Did you get the rose?” Richie asks, as Eddie hops into a bar stool next to him. There’s a glass of something amber in front of him, but he isn’t touching it just yet. A turtle is snoozing down the counter, god only knows where it came from.

one of the rules for the dreamspace that I established for this story was that if there's a turtle mentioned, then it's safe and can't be broken into by It. I needed Richie and Eddie to have a safe haven from It that they could escape to for a time, and I like the idea of the turtle helping out in subtle ways. I know everyone and their mom subscribes to the turtle being able to pull off big miracles and all, but some of my Catholic upbringing shows through here: I learned in school and in church that God helps those who help themselves, essentially.

these days of course I barely believe in a capital-G God, except for how my OCD takes on a stridently religious and vaguely conservative flavor. that having been said, it seeps through into how I write stories: if there is a god figure involved, their help tends to be vaguely incomplete, and it's ultimately up to the characters to get from point A to point B. but it's nice to have the assist.

From one eyeblink to the next, a Long Island iced tea somehow pops into existence in front of Eddie.

dunno what the fuck a Long Island iced tea tastes like. the only iced tea I've ever tasted is the Nestea stuff.

“Neat trick,” says Eddie, and wants to smack himself for it. Neat trick? God-fucking-dammit, he’s forty years old, he should be able to come up with better than that! “Yeah, I—I got the rose.”

“I got it from my mom’s old flower shop,” Richie confesses, a hint of his old mischief flickering in his eyes. “Remember, we used to play there all the time, and she’d tell us not to play rough ‘cause we’d knock the pots over? Remember when we were seven and we did?”

God, does Eddie remember. “She was so fucking mad,” he says. “She grounded you for a week, didn’t she?”

“Yeah!” says Richie. “Yeah, it felt like the end of the world, she specifically said I couldn’t go see you. I couldn’t see anyone but I definitely could not go see you. I was so fucking miserable about that until you came through my window.”

this story is definitely borrowed on some level from the Teen Wolf MTV series, although I will confess here and now I've only ever seen it through Tumblr gifsets. this is actually the only punishment Maggie could ever devise that Richie can't talk or bargain his way out of—I imagine that the Toziers had a fairly permissive household, simply bc Maggie and Went had a lot of work and thus couldn't spare the time to really discipline Richie that much. I think that they're probably like, not the worst parents ever, but they said some vaguely insensitive things without realizing Richie was gay and could hear and internalize what they said.

but they did love him. they just didn't understand him.

Eddie laughs, remembering it now: he’d snuck out of the house and biked as hard and as fast as he could on his little bicycle, sticking cotton in the bell so it wouldn’t give him away. He’d even hidden his bike behind a big bush, and then clambered up the tree the way Richie had shown him just weeks ago, trying very hard not to look down. Then he’d scrambled across the branch and knocked on Richie’s window, and hissed, Let me in! Let me in! Why did you take the highest fucking window I’m gonna fall and my brains are gonna splatter out onto the ground let me in! Richie had let him in, eyes wide, and then hugged him fiercely. “I remember,” he says. “I didn’t look down the whole time, I thought I was gonna die if I did. You know, I think your mom almost saw me?”

“She totally saw you,” Richie assures him. “She just didn’t wanna fuck up your knight in shining armor routine.”

just because Richie can't go see Eddie doesn't mean Eddie can't go see Richie. Maggie's met Sonia Kaspbrak and she's aware, on some level, that Richie and Eddie have a special thing she can't really hope to get in between of, so she doesn't even try.

“What does that make you, the princess in the tower?” Eddie asks.

“Fuck no, I’d be a shitty princess,” says Richie. “It makes me the thing sealed away in the tower that only the purest of hearts can touch, or some shit like that.”

Richie is absolutely the princess here.

“What the fuck kind of movies did you watch when you were seven,” Eddie marvels. “That’s really fucking specific.”

“The same kind you did,” says Richie. “I just paid more attention than you did.”

“Because we’d watch at nine and I’d be falling asleep by that time!” Eddie huffs, smacking Richie’s shoulder. “It’s a miracle I even stayed awake for your shitty fantasy movies. Or some kind of testament.”

“To what?” Richie asks, tilting his head. His eyes are fixed on Eddie’s, his eyes are blue, and his hand reaches for Eddie’s, fingers settling over Eddie’s knuckles. Waiting. He’s had practice, Eddie remembers, thirty years’ worth of it. God. Eddie wants to lean over and kiss his lips, wants to take him to bed, wants to pull him close and never let him go. Wants everything, with Richie. All he has to do is to say it.

How much I love you. I love you. I love you. The words stick in his throat, unable to leave even when Eddie tries his best to push them out.

“How badly I was bothered by that spring in your mattress poking into my ass,” Eddie says instead.

Eddie's inability to say "I love you" stems from the emotional abuse his mother and his wife heaped on him. and it is abuse despite the fact that Eddie actually gives them both quite a lot of slack, Myra moreso than his mom. now that he's actually in a relationship with a person he does love more than anything, he finds it difficult to express the words without having to be told to, because he's used to having to dutifully say it without really feeling it. I'd say he actually has some trauma around the phrase that he's not quite facing head-on.

it actually says a lot about Richie that he doesn't really ask him, at any point, to say I love you out loud. I've always thought that once Richie and Eddie are in a relationship, Richie is well aware of Eddie's issues around the phrase, so instead he's the one expressing it verbally more. he understands that Eddie expresses his love through other ways, and that's enough for him.

Richie laughs, squeezing Eddie’s hand. “The spring gave my mattress character,” he says, and if he’s disappointed, he isn’t letting it show. Used to be Richie was an open book Eddie could read, but 27 years apart have added new chapters and rewritten old pages, and now Eddie’s trying to find where he left off. Maybe trying to start over.

he's not disappointed, that's just Eddie's anxiety kicking in. Richie's hand squeeze is Richie being like, "hey I hear that you love me and I love you too."

Eddie squeezes back, and hopes that’s enough for now, at least for Richie. It’s not enough for Eddie, not as good as the words that keep sticking in his throat, refusing to come out. “It also gave me insomnia,” he says. “How you could sleep on that bed I’ll never understand.”

“Like a baby,” Richie says. “Not my fault you were a sensitive old man even at seven.”

“Well, I guess that explains a lot,” Eddie says, “at seven you acted like you were two years old.”

“You dick,” says Richie, fondly, rubbing a thumb over Eddie’s knuckles. Eddie swallows, at the sustained contact, half-certain his heart might just claw its way out of his ribcage.

that's what love feels like bitch!!!

“Where are we, anyway?” Eddie asks, changing the subject away from their shared childhood, the bittersweet memories they’d forgotten when they left Derry.

“Hollywood Improv,” says Richie. “I used to come here all the time, do sets, sometimes sketches with other people.” He nods to the stage just beyond them, empty with only a microphone stand in the middle, waiting for someone to get up on stage. “It’s a good place to go, if you’re the type who wants drinks with your comedy,” he says. “I thought about the Groundlings Theater, but it’d just be empty and depressing without anybody else inside. You wouldn’t like that. I wanna take you to places that aren’t majorly depressing when empty, so—” He shrugs. “Here we are. This is the first time ever I’ve seen this place empty. Maybe one day you’ll see it with the crowd in.”

my secret headcanon: Richie was in the Groundlings! he was well-known as the resident impressionist, it's where he perfected some of his Voices. he still drops in every so often.

“Maybe you could introduce me to a couple of people,” says Eddie. “I mean, you’ve got friends, I’ve seen you on TV, you talk about them.”

Taylor Swift had not released evermore by the time I wrote this, but 'tis the damn season has a line that reflects what Richie's going to say in response to Eddie's remark about him having friends in LA: So I'll go back to L.A. and the so-called friends / Who'll write books about me, if I ever make it.

key word: so-called. Richie has been living a very lonely, empty life in Hollywood.

Richie smiles, a sad little thing. “Not a lot of friends like the Losers,” he says. “None at all, probably. And definitely no one like you, ever.” No one, Eddie realizes, who would crawl through Richie’s window for the sole purpose of keeping him company when he was grounded, or sick, or just didn’t want to be alone. Richie takes a sip of his whiskey, and says, matter-of-factly, “I don’t think a single fucking one of them would be as worried as you guys are about me. I know my management wouldn’t.”

“You heard?” Eddie asks.

“I mean, I knew from the start, kinda,” says Richie. “It’s Hollywood, man, it’s just the business.”

Richie's management being terrible people is actually just an invention for this story, bc I needed forces to keep Richie very isolated and sad. if he had an actually good manager in this story it would be over very quickly.

Just the business. No one like you. They’ve both been so lonely, but Eddie at least had a few people he could talk to, sometimes, that Myra didn’t really know. No one on the level of the Losers, never anyone else, but there were people who passed in and out of his life that he considered good friends. He wonders if Richie even had that much.

Then again, there’s the elephant in the room he’s been trying to cover, the one they’ve been tiptoeing around. Maybe he didn’t. Eddie can still remember the way his mother used to watch them when they grew older, like she didn’t like how close Richie would get, and he knows Richie didn’t touch a lot of other boys as much.

Sonia's the type of parent who tries to make her son choke down fake medicines bc she wants him firmly under her thumb. I think she did not like that Eddie had friends in general, but she sensed that Richie and Eddie were very close and did not like that. in her head, that meant Richie could well supplant her place in Eddie's heart. Sonia Kaspbrak is a terrible person, by the way.

“God, Rich,” says Eddie, softly, squeezing his hand, his heart cracking for Richie. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” says Richie, smiling again, and this one doesn’t reach his eyes, “I’m fine. Really, Eds.”

“No, hey,” says Eddie, then, “C’mere, asshole.” He tugs on Richie’s hand, to urge him closer, and miracle of miracles, Richie goes. “I’m sorry,” he says, wrapping his arms around Richie and pulling him as close as he can. This close, he smells cheap deodorant and roses, the musty odor of the clubhouse the last time the seven of them had been inside it together. This close, Richie just feels warm. “I’m sorry that no one crawled through your window to keep you company.”

Eddie cannot say the words "I love you", but he can say this. it's good enough for Richie, who doesn't need to hear it explicitly said.

“Kinda hard,” Richie croaks, his voice breaking even as he tries to sound casual and light, “since my apartment’s on the 19th floor. Or it used to be. I think I don’t have it anymore.”

Eddie just hugs him tighter, biting back his instinctive answer. This is important, and maybe he can’t say I love you, but he can say something else instead. He can say you are not alone. “Rich,” he says, stroking over his back. “Richie. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

and what is love, but refusing to leave someone alone even in hell?

Richie doesn’t say anything. But he leans in close and wraps his arms around Eddie, hugging back tightly and slumping against him till his face is buried in Eddie’s chest, as if he’s scared It will yank him away once more. He sniffles, and Eddie shuts his eyes, because goddammit they’re both going to cry, aren’t they. Well, whatever. He clings tight to Richie, unwilling to let him go, and holds him as Richie’s shoulders start to shake.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eddie says, and is surprised to find he means it. If he has to stay in Derry then so be it. He can be brave enough to do that. He can be brave enough to stay, for however long it takes. “I’m staying right here, right fucking here until we can get you out.” I love you.

Richie makes a noise into his shirt, then looks up and blinks at him. He leans back up again, one hand letting go of Eddie’s shirt to press against his face, and asks hesitantly, “Eds, is it okay if I—”

Eddie leans in close to kiss him, before he can think better of it. Richie freezes up instantly, eyes going wide, and oh, fuck, Eddie’s done something wrong, hasn’t he? He breaks away then and says, “Shit, Rich, I’m sorry, I knew you had a—a thing about touch—”

“Do that again,” Richie says. “I wasn’t ready that time.” Then he laughs, almost breathless with it. “Am I ever ready for you, though?” he asks. “I’ve been holding this torch for goddamn forever, I dunno how to put it down.”

“Let me hold it with you, then,” says Eddie, and tugs him in close to kiss him again, in an empty bar in LA, in a dream that feels real enough for him. Stan had given him and the other Losers the letters that would’ve been sent out when he died, and had given Eddie Richie’s letter. Be who you want to be. Be proud. And for god’s sake, Richie, tell him, he’ll always care about you. Stan’s always been a perceptive one.

I imagine what kept Stan from dying in this 'verse was that Patty was working on making a birdhouse instead of booking vacations. so she had tools in hand that meant she was able to break into the bathroom before Stan could go through with it.

Richie goes, closing his eyes this time to kiss back, tender and gentle. Eddie was expecting him to be a lot of things for their first kiss, but somehow tender did not, in fact, register as any of them. But he is tender, even gentle, like he’s handling something precious and doesn’t want to break it, doesn’t want to disrespect it in any way.

Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever been kissed like this. Myra’s kisses were perfunctory, the kind of thing they wanted over with as soon as possible so they could get on with their day. His girlfriends definitely never kissed like this, like kissing Eddie’s an act of reverence, done gladly, with the scrape of stubble against his bare skin. Eddie threads his fingers to Richie’s hair, leans back in the stool as far as he can go without toppling over so Richie can crowd in, touch him, god, Richie is touching him and Eddie’s a fucking livewire under his own skin.

Eventually they have to break away from each other, and Richie looks floored, to say the least, eyes wide and grin dopey. “Where’d you learn to kiss like that?” he asks.

“It’s a dream,” says Eddie, loftily, “I’ll kiss however I want.”

KITH!!!!! I love writing my pairings kissing. it's great fun writing them being tender and sweet, especially if they're Richie and Eddie and they also like to engage in banter and jokes.

“Mm, fair,” says Richie. His hand wanders into Eddie’s hair, and Eddie shivers at his touch. This should’ve been his first kiss. This should’ve been his wedding kiss. Electricity thrums under his skin where Richie is touching him, his nerves alight. He knows he’s asleep, right now, but he’s never felt more alive, more like flying, than he does right now. “Hang on, does this count as our first kiss? Does anything we do in dreams like this count?”

Richie’s got a point, actually. “Yes?” Eddie ventures, after mulling it over for a half-minute. “This is—a weird arcade token dreamspace thing, not just a regular dream. I’ll remember this when I wake up.”

“Oh,” says Richie. He smiles. “I’ll count it, then.”

“You had better,” Eddie huffs, and kisses him again.

they're In Love your honor.

#iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid #asks #CUTE.#hold on i still need you

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