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cobrafantasies · 1 year

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The UPS Driver

SamBucky / Rated G / Complete

Written for SamBucky Valentine’s Day Bingo 2023 by @sambuckylibrary, prompt: Meet-Cute

This UPS idea has been sitting in my WIPs forever! Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Sam's had enough. Three packages stolen in the past two weeks — that's enough. If no one's gonna help him then he's gonna help himself. Thus, how Sam ends up sitting on his porch, on guard, each morning he has a package scheduled to arrive.

It's been interesting so far. Interacting with the delivery and postal workers. They must not be used to meeting the actual recipients of the mail. Most of them are awkward as hell, timidly greeting Sam or clumsily handing him the package because they don't know what to do with it now that he's sitting here. But every package is now accounted for, so Sam is fine with enduring all the strange interactions he has to.

Sam hears the roar of a truck slow to halt and soon hears footsteps approaching his front steps. He lowers the newspaper he's reading and his eyes fall upon an unexpectedly fit body.

Jesus, that little brown UPS uniform might not be for such beefy thighs and bulging biceps. The man has both. Sam quickly lifts his gaze realizing how inappropriate his ogling must be but he finds the worker staring right back.

"I can take that here, thank you," Sam prompts and holds out his hand.

The man is still frozen and it takes him a second to blink down and realize he is holding a brown box that he's meant to deliver.

"Oh um right, sorry — hi," the man smiles as he steps forward and hands Sam the package. Now that he's closer Sam can see how truly attractive the man's face is and with bright blue eyes that match the sky.

"Hi," Sam echoes shyly and takes the box, "Thanks."

The driver stands there suddenly realizing this is all his job entails and briskly takes a step back.

"Well, have a nice day," the man extends with a little wave.

"You too," Sam returns and then shamelessly watches the man walk away. Those small brown shorts aren't hiding that cute ass either.

The next time Sam has a delivery scheduled with UPS, he ain't gonna lie, he's happy to see the same driver again. And the fine-looking man seems happy to see Sam too, he's smiling like a lot. It looks damn good on him too. Although what wouldn't look good on him — he's working that one-tone, paper color uniform for crying out loud. Which speaking of, looks even smaller today. Every corner of each garment is hugging his body tight enough that Sam vaguely wonders if the man swapped it out for a smaller size.

"Hey, Mr. Wilson," Bucky greets him clearly reading the name off the box he's holding.

Sam smiles on instinct.

"Hey, Mr. UPS Driver," Sam responds.

The man chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Uh, it's Bucky."

"Bucky — as in your name?" Sam checks.

"Yeah, nickname anyhow," Bucky affirms as he hands the package over to Sam.

"Huh. Well, it's Sam."

"Sam," Bucky repeats like he's testing it on his tongue for the first time, "I'm glad you're still ordering things."

"Online shopping is the way of the world now, ain't it?" Sam jests.

"Sure is," Bucky agrees but his eyes are scanning Sam up and down with a smile that's downright sinful, "Hope you keep buying stuff. Have a good day, Sam."

Bucky waves goodbye as he steps off the porch.

"Bye," Sam says distantly watching him walk away yet again.

It's not completely Sam's fault that Bucky returns three more times in the following week. Sam really needed... things. He bought a few things for his nephews, his sister, his living room and some other things UPS delivers. Sam can't totally remember what he bought. But the withdrawal from his bank account is worth every penny when Bucky steps back up on his porch with that tight uniform and charming smile.

“This is probably my favorite house to deliver to," Bucky comments on this day.

“Oh, and why’s that?” Sam asks with a knowing smirk.

“The nice view,” Bucky grins and lets his eyes trail down Sam, “And good company. Not many people hang out on their porch.”

“Yeah well, I’ve been stolen from,” Sam reveals gravely.

Bucky doesn't miss a beat.

“Guess I’m lucky your neighbors are assholes,” he quips.

Sam laughs at that.

"Guess I'm lucky too," Sam agrees.

Sam's not really keeping track of the days. His late morning focus has become waiting for his hot UPS driver to deliver any which thing he buys, and then returns, from the internet. It's going well. They've started chatting a bit more on each visit. Sam's been contemplating how to make a move for a while now but he chickens out by the time Bucky routinely says, "Have a nice day, Sam."

Today is different. From the moment Sam sees Bucky walking up to the house, he's not just carrying a brown box in his hands. He's also holding a bouquet of flowers and a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Sam belatedly registers that today is Valentine's Day... not that he had any plans tonight anyhow.

Bucky steps up to Sam and holds the array of items out for him.

"What's this?" Sam asks.

"It looks like flowers and a box of chocolates," Bucky answers like a wise ass.

"Yeah, no shit," Sam smirks, "But I don't know who would've sent me them."

Bucky only shrugs and pushes the flowers toward him when Sam notices there's a card. He takes the bouquet and opens the note. As he reads it, his face softens.

The note reads: Dinner tonight? I'll deliver ;)

Sam slowly looks up at the blushing delivery driver.

"You asking me out, Buck?"

"Nah," Bucky shakes his head, playing coy, "Asking you to be my valentine."

"In that case," Sam laughs to himself, "The answer's hell yes."

#sbvdaybingo2023 #meet cute #tumblr fic #sambucky #sambucky fic #sambucky fanfiction #my fics

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uhsolikethis · 28 days

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I usually lean more towards fluff and humor but I got a Dark Romance AU for SamBucky or SamSteve depending on the ending.

So, Sam and Steve have been together for about 2 years now, and Sam feels like he has finally found the one. But things start to feel a bit off when he notices Steve acting a bit strange. He keeps his phone on silent, says he's at work, but when Sam calls Steve's job, he hasn't shown up for that day, and he's changed his passwords on his laptop and phone. Sam thinks Steve is cheating on him. So he hires a private detective.

Enter Bucky, PI for hire, and Steve's on again off again, best friend who's just got back from overseas. Sam has no idea who Bucky is. Bucky has been a sensitive spot for Steve for years and he has vaguely brought him up but never truly talked him for personal and safety reasons.

Anyway, Sam hires Bucky to get information on Steve. Bucky, who still cares for Steve, finds this situation funny and is going to Spy on Steve as a joke and later reveal his connection to Steve, but Bucky is starting to fall in love with Sam.

The more time he spends with Sam, the deeper in love he falls. He wants to be with Sam himself so he gathers all the evidence on Steve's affair and brings it to Sam, breaking them up in hopes of being with him. But here's the thing Steve might not actually be cheating on Sam. And that's what this story is about.

Is Bucky lying about Steve cheating on Sam in order to be with Sam, or did Steve actually cheat on him? If he's not cheating, what was Steve lying and keeping secrets about? Also, why did Bucky spend so much time overseas? Who can Sam trust in this situation, and what about his own secrets?

#sam wilson #sambucky #bucky barnes #samsteve #steve rogers #This has been sitting in my brain all day #i want to write this so bad but i dont know how #its been years since i wrote anything #the story would be full of twist and turns #and Sam in sweaters because i really love him and sweaters #lie and all that #fanfiction ideas

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bottlesandcats · 2 years

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Bless the pre-tfatws sambucky shippers who literally had nothing but a couple lines of dialogue but kept the faith, and boy were they rewarded. If they could go through that and maintain a positive mindset then we can surely make it through a couple vague movie announcements!

Remember all that we’ve got!

#keep the faith #the ship isn’t dead #sambucky #tfatws #winterfalcon #bucky barnes #Sam Wilson #cap 4 #d23expo

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ao3feed-sambucky · 2 months

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A Good Night's Rest

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/306MIhd by OneBuckyBitch Sam and Bucky are living together now as boyfriends. But why aren't they sleeping in the same bed together? Words: 1638, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 3 of Domestic SamBucky Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Alpine the Cat (Marvel), Figaro the Cat (Marvel) Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson Additional Tags: POV Sam Wilson (Marvel), Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Has Nightmares, Protective Sam Wilson, Literal Sleeping Together, But also, Sleeping Together, vague sexual content read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/306MIhd

#Bucky #Captain America #Winter Soldier #Sam Wilson #James Barnes #Falcon #SamBucky #BuckySam #IFTTT #ao3feed

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alwaysonlineau · 6 months

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hi! welcome to the always online au!

for anyone who was into the hype of parkner back in late 2019/the early quarantine days, this might be a little bit familiar to you. basically, this is a social media au for marvel that i created when getting into parkner and thompsborn and when one of the main wlw ships was mj/shuri. it consisted of screenshots of (obviously fake) social media accounts (mainly twitter) of some of the marvel characters and it was mostly shitposting with a tiny hint of a plot. however, because of the mental health kick that came with quarantine, i ended up deleting the account while in a depression drop.

it’s been over 3 years and i honestly miss making this au, as it was just fun and gave me something to do, and a few days ago i realized that i still have the apps i used when i originally made this au and all of the fake tweets and messages were still on them, so… well.

basically, i decided to bring it back!

so, if you don’t remember or never saw this au when it was originally happening, you might have some questions! under the cut is a very basic q&a:

what is the always online au about?

nothing! also everything! like i said, it was entirely a shitpost account that very vaguely had a plot, but it was 100% just something i did in my free time for fun!

it’s essentially me throwing my sense of humor in a box with ships and characters that i like and then violently shaking it until something that i find funny comes out and then i would post it !!

ships and characters? which ones?

like i mentioned above, i made this during like the late 2019-2020 era of parkner hype, so, obviously, it was mainly parkner (peter parker/harley keener) BUT it also features many other marvel ships! i am going to be changing the ships up a bit to better match my current preferences. i’ll include a list of ships below this paragraph, but first, this is also going to include PLENTY of platonic/familial dynamics as well! so if you love stucky, sorry they aren’t dating in this but they are obviously besties, and there’s irondad, stuff like that, okay? i’ll try to include it all!

ships:

parkner (peter parker/harley keener)

ironhusbands (tony stark/james rhodes)

gwemj (gwen stacy/michelle jones)

peppermay (pepper potts/may parker)

sambucky (sam wilson/bucky barnes)

thompsborn (harry osborn/flash thompson)

nedbetty (ned leeds/betty brant)

thorbruce (thor/bruce banner)

and more that i will add to this list as i figure them out! suggestions are more than welcome!

characters include everyone in the above mentioned ships (obviously lol) as well as any and all marvel/mcu characters that feel relevant to include! such as:

happy hogan

shuri

t’challa

the guardians of the galaxy

matt, foggy and karen from daredevil

funny accounts for villains

norman osborn (ew)

loki (and maybe mobius? maybe include that ship too? i haven’t watched loki season 2 yet so we’ll see i guess lmao)

and more! again, i am open to suggestions!

if anyone has ideas for characters, ships, or dynamics to include, feel free to message me or send an ask!!

how often should i expect updates?

that one is kind of tricky, because i am an adult with a full time job who is also balancing hobbies and family and everything all at the same time. this is something that i’ll try to work on during my free time, and when i did this before it wasn’t hard to make updates once i figured out what i wanted to do for them, but still, my free time kind of depends on the day and the week.

i’m not going to commit to a strict schedule, but i don’t work weekends so my goal is to update every weekend! if i miss a weekend, i’ll try to get it posted during the week, and if i have a week with extra free time, i’ll do some additional posts as well.

i’ll do my best to be regular with it!!

anything else i should know?

yes! this is an ongoing creative project that i’m doing for fun, and i want it to be fun for anyone and everyone who may come across it! that means i want it to be interactive!! this is something i did before, as well.

for instance, when i was running this au in 2019/2020, someone sent an ask wanting to see harley finding out about the vulture after him and peter start dating, so i answered the ask with this:

obviously this au isn’t picking up from where the old one left off, so those tweets are not considered canon to the current always online au, BUT that’s just an example! i want people to feel free to send in asks and questions for the characters or for situations, and i will do my best to make it fit into the canon of the au!!

i think that’s it?

if anyone has any additional questions, comments, or concerns they would like me to address, feel free to send them in! i’m going to try to get the first update of this au posted today (october 17, 2023) but no promises! if not today, it WILL be up tomorrow!

once the official au is being posted, i’m also going to create a pinned post that links to this one as well as all the au updates and anything else necessary to include (like the tagging system i’m going to create and things like that) so that will be posted shortly after the first update is out! for now, thank you for reading!

i hope to see you guys always online ;)

#parkner #ironhusbands #peppermay #nedbetty #sambucky #gwemj #thorbruce #thompsborn #alwaysonlineau

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elwenyere · 8 months

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WIP Poll Results, Part II

Hello, fam: I am back with more snips from the top choices in this WIP poll game. Last Wednesday was the Icemav second place snip, and today I bring you an excerpt from the third place Sambucky WIP, a follow-up for my Edge of Tomorrow AU, "Look Alive."

I first wrote this AU for Samtember, and I always hoped I would have a chance to come back and give it a Sambucky second half someday. Here are some next steps in that direction!

CW: references to temporary character deaths

.....

Finding the Winter Soldier turned out to be more complicated than Sam had expected.

Not quite “storm a beach that’s writhing with the murderous tentacles of a thousand pissed-off aliens” complicated, sure - but a tricky enough variation on the pattern that Sam still blew three resets trying to give Phillips and H-Squad the slip: locked up in solitary for ten hours before getting deployed to die again on the beach, shot for desertion by an overeager sergeant as he darted across the air strip, pulled under the wheels of a transport truck he tried to use for cover.

By the time he finally made it to the hangar where Barnes was training - standing in the middle of a spacious airplane bay the army had apparently refitted as a firing range for their favorite poster boy - Sam was feeling a little testy about the situation.

“You couldn’t have at least told me where to find you?” he called out.

Barnes finished firing off the final rounds from his rifle, catching three of the range’s whirling metal targets directly in their centers, and then he turned to look at Sam.

“Who the hell are you, and what the fuck are you doing here?”

“Following your vague-ass directions,” Sam shot back. “We meet, tomorrow, on the beach. You told me to come find you. You said I should say that it’s happening to me now, and that you shouldn’t blow another chance.”

Barnes’ eyes searched his face, his fingers flexing around the barrel of his rifle.

“The attack tomorrow,” he said. “It’s a trap?”

Sam felt his lips press together, his ears ringing with the zip and whir of Mimic arms in motion, the helpless rattle of machine-gun fire, the low thud of the missile hitting Barnes in the lower back, once, twice, a dozen times.

“It’s a massacre,” Sam confirmed.

Barnes swore, taking a slow breath before he slung his rifle over his back.

“Come with me.”

#mcu #sambucky #my wips #wip game #wip poll #thank you to everyone who participated!!!

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seiya-starsniper · 7 months

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20 questions for fic writers!

TRIPLE TAG THREAT from my faves @arialerendeair @bazzybelle and @honeyteacakes, I love you guys so so so much!!!!! 💖💖💖

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

I have 36 in total published, a whole bunch more in drafts!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

167,076 which is crazy when you consider 146,736 are just from THIS YEAR

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The Sandman, currently! I have a couple of WIPs for other fandoms but I just haven't gotten around to them.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Dreams for a Dozen Cats - 527 kudos A Dream for a Viscount - 513 kudos and if I get burned, at least we were electrified - 504 kudos Wake Up & Smell The Flowers - 457 kudos Let's conspire to ignite - 397 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! I've been bad about it lately, but I love responding because I absolutely adore the dynamic of being able to communicate with my readers. It's just a tiring exercise and I have to be really in the mood to do it! But I absolutely love and adore every comment I receive 💖💖💖

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

A sweet dream - it's the only one where I've used the tag Main Character Death! The ending is quite hopeful, but the death is in fact permanent, take care if you choose to read it!

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Hnnnnnnngh I have absolutely no fucking idea because they almost all have really happy endings! That's like asking me to pick a favorite child. Honestly though, if you want sappy and sexy romance throughout an entire fic with literally zero conflict, then my happiest ending is probably A Dream for a Viscount. If you want ANGST ANGST ANGST with a massive payoff and a lot of hurt/comfort leading up to a soft ending, my happiest ending is the one in and if I get burned, at least we were electrified

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not on AO3! In my ff.net days though, whew lordy the salt was strong whenever I wrote somebody's NOTP and dared to publish it. Those were some interesting days.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Well, seeing as I am a mod for @monsterfucktoberbingo....I think you can probably guess what type of smut I write LMAO. I do write quite a bit of omegaverse too just to spice things up 😄

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I have! Back in my ff.net days, my teenage self LIVED on the high school fandom crossover fic. I shall never return to those days ever again, but I had a good time. I also recently wrote this Dreamling/SnowBaz crossover for my beloved @bazzybelle💖💖💖

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge! I never really participated in fandoms where fic stealing was common thankfully.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have! I have absolutely no idea what site it ended up on, but I've had my fics translated into Russian and Chinese.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not in a really long time! When I was a teen, I used to RP characters with my friends as a writing exercise, and then that would turn into a fic! I also absolutely LOVED the round robin fic culture back in the old livejournal days. (can you tell I'm dating myself heavily lmao)

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

00Q hands down. I'm still reading old favorites to this day. Although, I will admit Dreamling is a pretty damn close second considering *gestures vaguely(

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Oh lord, I have quite a few, published and unpublished. Most of my published unfinished WIPs are just rotting on ff.net and I've made my peace with them. Unpublished WIPs...I have quite a few SamBucky fics that never made it out of drafts and I'm really sad about that because I really loved that ship at one point :(

16. What are your writing strengths?

I have a few I'm pretty proud of: - Succinctness: I can tell a whole story in under 10k words. One-shots are my bread and butter. - Angst: Do you want to cry? I'll make you cry and wring your soul out with no regrets. - Fluff: On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you want to feel soft and like you're snuggling with a cloud, I can do that for you too. Fluff is such a delight to write, because I like to feel good, and I love making others feel good too 💖 - Dialogue: I love writing dialogue. It's such a delight to try and figure what a character would say when placed in ~situations~

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Whew lordy, here we goooooooooooo: - Longfic/Multichapter fics: I can and have written longer fics, but it's highly demotivating for me. I am struggling so hard to finish my multi-chapter fics right now, it's a nightmare. I'll get there, but... - Descriptions: I AM SO BAD AT MAKING SETTINGS AND DESCRIBING HOW PEOPLE LOOK. I'm sure some people will disagree with me, but I some days I truly hate my inability to describe things the way I want to, or the way I've seen other people be able to. It is a thing I am working on, for sure, I know it's just a matter of practice. - WIP hell: I start and stop things at the drop of a hat. Rest in pieces to all my ideas stuck in partially written states - Plot Summaries: I can write a whole thing and be utterly unable to give you a plot summary. Save me hahahahaha

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I LOVE IT. It's not for me since I only speak English, but I love coming across it in fic.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Yu-Gi-Oh!

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

...heh. I thought this was gonna be harder but it's definitely and if I get burned, at least we were electrified. This fic dragged me out of lurking in fandom to full on writing and participating again. It's my most canon-adjacent fic. It's got angst and action and feelings. It has tentacle sex. It has the Corinthian being indulged within an inch of his life. This fic is a love letter to myself, it the reason I am here, in sandman fandom, writing as much as I am. Is it my best written story out of all my fics? No, it was my first fic after a long writing hiatus and while I consider it a well written piece, I also like to think my writing quality has increased since I first wrote it. But it is my favorite fic, for all the reasons above, and for the sheer joy it brought into my life then, and in the subsequent months after.

Tagging: @valiantstarlights @five-and-dimes @chaosheadspace @ironwoman359 @silver-dream89 @rosaren2498 @bruce-wayne-simp @acedragontype and whoever else wants to do it!

#seiya gets tagged #fanfic writer ask game

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thatmexisaurusrex · 4 months

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From That Show

This fic is for @jemgirl86 for @sambuckylibrary's SamBucky Gift Event. It's a little angstier than my usual fics, but it organically became that way and I think it just makes sense like that. And it's a holiday fic, so you know I'll make it sweet in the end. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fic, Shana, and thank you for getting me to write it again!

From That Show

Summary: Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes were once best friends working on the same sitcom. Now, five years after Bucky mysteriously quit and abruptly cut all contact with Sam, they bump into each other during the holidays in their hometown of Delacroix.

Excerpt:

"I feel like I’ve seen you around before,” said the man, and Sam was about to shut whatever bullshit this man was going to say down but then the man lit up and blurted, “Wilson Family Seafood! I worked on your boat every summer during high school. You were in my sister’s grade – Becca Barnes.” Sam gaped. “Bucky Barnes,” said Sam as his mind raced. Sam remembered him vaguely. Bucky had been older by a few years. A little intimidating despite his kind nature and goofy disposition. Maybe it was because he was a little older. Maybe it was because Bucky always seemed to be walking around shirtless on the boat during the hot Delacroix summers. “Didn’t your sister blow up one of the chemistry classrooms?” asked Sam. Bucky laughed. “She got a few chemicals mixed up,” said Bucky like he had to tell this to a million people, “Also, it didn’t blow up. She just… gently singed the room.”

READ THE REST ON AO3!

#sbgift2023 #sambucky #sam wilson #bucky barnes #sambucky fic #holiday fic #friends to enemies #enemies to friends to lovers #angst with a happy ending #no powers au #actor sam wilson #actor bucky barnes #my fic #From That Show

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questinwitchface · 1 year

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You Probably Think This Poem Is About You (and That’s Because It Is)

New SamBucky fic, dears! It was inspired by this post by @logicheartsoul. Read this snippet, if you'd like:

Sam didn’t mean to find out about it.

In fact, Sam has gone out of his way to avoid finding out about it. Whenever Bucky makes a vague reference to it, Sam does his best not to pry, never asking for follow-up information, or any questions at all. When Bucky goes to his room with his laptop, Sam turns up the volume on the TV in the living room to avoid overhearing him. When Bucky opens his notebook, Sam sits in a spot where he won’t be able to accidentally catch a glimpse at whatever Bucky’s writing.

It’s not that Sam doesn’t want to ask questions or that he’s not interested. It’s just that Bucky had seemed so shy about it when he’d first brought it up. He’d blushed and uncharacteristically avoided eye contact, as if it’s anything to be embarrassed about. Sam doesn’t want to make Bucky feel even more self-conscious or anything, so he doesn’t ask about it, doesn’t bring it up, and certainly doesn’t ever look at Bucky’s laptop or notebook.

Keep reading!

Rated E; SamBucky; fluff, light angst, domestic, Now complete!

#sambucky fanfic #sambucky #my fanfic

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jemgirl86 · 9 months

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I know something you don’t know, and I got something to tell ya 🎶🎶😭

Like, again lol, I’d never presume to speak for everybody, but I’ve been thinking about it since my post the other day, why SamBucky has fallen out of the top 100, why writers aren’t writing. I mean, last year I posted a fic every month except January, sometimes multiple fics a month.

And I know my break isn’t due to their “divorce era,” because a couple I’m shipping being out of each other’s orbit has never made a difference to me, just ask any couple I’ve ever shipped in my life lol. And it’s not because I’m done with the MCU, because my buddy and I were just discussing the hate that Phase 4 gets the other day, and I literally pulled up the Phase 4 Wikipedia page and took a look, and there was only one project in there that I just didn’t care for. The MCU has always had some projects I loved, some I liked just fine, and some I thought were basically average, and that’s how I feel about Phase 4 (I could write 1000 words about the unrealistic and silly hate newer MCU projects get, and how it makes no sense logically, because the MCU was never 100% bangers, but I’ll spare you lol), so it’s not like I’m suffering from “superhero fatigue” 🤢 (I loath that phrase)

Nope, I think it’s the feedback. Not even really the lack of feedback at this point, because engagement on here and ao3 started drying up in the middle of last year or so, and I was still churning stories out. Nah, it’s the type of feedback. People have really lost their minds in comment sections this past year. Not even just in mine, even though mine have been off the hook lol.

Sometimes I’ll be reading a fic, not even always a fic I like, I’ve seen it in fics I loved and fics I’m literally about to close because they’re not my cup of tea — but I’ll be reading a fic and go to scroll the comment section because I’m nosy lol, and I’ll see the most out of pocket, obnoxious, outrageously rude comment I’ve ever seen in my life.

We all dislike fics. Hell, I’ve seen some doozies myself, but you’re not supposed to tell the author about it in the comment section. I mean, a negative comment on a fic on here or ao3 is for like a truly exceptional circumstance, (even then I’d just close the fic…), not because you just didn’t like it… or because it wasn’t what you thought it was going to be… or because the author didn’t write a particular character the way you headcanon them. That’s nuts.

And if the fic truly pisses you off, I get that, boy do I get that lol. Even then though, you’re just supposed to vague post about it and be shady on here… not comment on the author’s actual work. Like if you hate my fic, then by all means, vaguely complain about it on here like a normal person, or DM your friend about it, but don’t give me a 2 star review in my comment section because I used a trope you don’t like.

Oh… and why are people airing their grievances about other things in the comments of a fic? Be on ao3, commenting, talking about everything BUT the story.

And… why are y’all acting like the grammar police in the comments of folks’ fics? Again, I’ve seen some grammar that made me genuinely sad, but I didn’t tell the author about it, because I’m not a dick.

Lol this is another long and rambling post from me, and it really could’ve been summed up with this: It’s hard to be motivated to write, even for your OTP, when you know there’s a good chance you’re going to get some bullshit comment because readers suddenly forgot how to act.

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abarbaricyalp · 3 months

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Hi! Not sure how it works, but for the Whumptober event: #15 for SamBucky?

Oh it is so embarrassing to be answering this so late. I have literally been working on it (off and on) since October. It never strayed from the top of my WIP pile. I just...gestures vaguely Thank you so much for sending in a prompt and I'm so sorry to have taken so long. I do love a good "Leave me alone, I'm fine" whump. I went with "Makeshift bandages" but I'm sure you can find "suppressed suffering" and "I'm fine" if you squint.

Putting Bandages Where Stitches Should Be

CW: Injury, violence, blood, etc

Read on AO3

Steve was right again. Sam hated it when Steve was right. It was making an indisputably bad day even worse.

"Don't go out today," Steve had said, all puppy-dogged eyes that morning. "I've got a bad feeling."

Him and his bad feelings. He called it a soldier's intuition and Sam called it a soldier's paranoia. But, dammit, he was usually right. That couldn’t be a byproduct of the serum, could it?

But it was a beautiful fall day and they needed groceries something fierce, so Sam had rolled his eyes and called him paranoid and headed out.

It had been fine for several hours, Sam wanted it noted. Just a normal day of errands. Hell, no one had even recognized him. He even tried a new coffee drink.

With a hysterical kind of laugh, Sam realized he hadn’t even made it to the grocery store yet. Probably a good thing since the car was now languishing in a parking lot somewhere and it was only going to get warmer as the day went on. What time was it, he wondered. Had Steve realized something was wrong yet? That paranoid intuition would be real handy right about then.

Sam leaned back against the dingy wall and tried not to think about how badly he was sweating against it. It was going to start mildewing. He still couldn’t figure out where these guys came from. The parking lot had been almost completely empty. There’d been no one else near him. One second, he was loading up a bag of new blankets into the back of the car, and the next someone was hitting him upside the head and dragging him away.

He knew they had to be trained at least a little. They were quiet and fierce. Nothing that Sam couldn’t normally hand, but there had been no fighting through the early wound to his head. Actually, it was still pulsing, each heartbeat a new throb of bruise-ache against his skull. The longer he sat here, the further the ache traveled, reaching for his temples, his ears, his eyes.

He closed his eyes, as if that would stave off anything at all, and listened to the ambient noise of whatever not-so-safe house he was being held in. He’d seen neither hide nor hair of his attackers since they’d thrown him into the small room. He assumed it was an apartment and this was some bedroom or office. It was clean, the carpet was almost soft. There were worse places, he thought. And with it being carpet, maybe they weren’t looking to make him bleed. That’d be nice.

He knew other people were around. He could hear them pacing around the other side of the door. His head hurt too much to concentrate on what they were saying. They were speaking German, which he didn’t speak, but it gave him a good feel that this was probably Hydra. It made the apartment even more confusing. What would Hydra want with Sam that involved just keeping him thrown in an empty office?

There was a cacophony outside then, snarling and the sounds of blows landing on bodies, bodies falling to the floor.

“Ich habe es dir gesagt!” he heard someone shout. “Er ist der Winter Soldier!”

Someone was shitting Sam. Instantly, all of the minor irritation of the day flooded over the actual concern of having been kidnapped by neo-Nazi assholes. If he’d said ‘this day can’t get worse’ this is the exact outcome that would have made it worse. He’d take bleeding over this.

There was more fighting and then the door was wrenched open and a very bloodied and bruised Winter Soldier was kicked into the room, landing hard on his face and wrist beside Sam.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Sam said, just to get it out there.

Barnes turned over onto his back, keeping his hurt wrist against his chest. He looked up at Sam, scowled through the blood on his face, managed to glare while both eyes were almost swelled shut. “I ain’t thrilled to see you neither, birdbrain,” he coughed. He turned back onto his side to spit out a glob of blood that landed on the knee of Sam’s jeans.

“Asshole,” Sam snapped and tried to clean it off, even though it was already a lost battle. “I take it you fought back,” Sam guessed.

“I take it you did not,” Bucky shot back and it felt more like an insult than an actual insult would have.

Sam scowled at him. It had been months since they’d seen each other. Sam couldn’t even say what city or even country it was that he’d caught up to Barnes in. It hadn’t been a long meeting. More or less just enough time for them to grapple and exchange a few threats before Barnes shook Sam’s tail again. At first, Sam took it as a personal failing that he kept losing Barnes. He was too ashamed to admit to Steve that he’d caught up with the reanimated best friend but let him slip away. Then, as time went on and Sam caught him more often, he placed all of the blame fully on Barnes. There were times, he knew, when Barnes let him catch up. These happened only often enough to keep Sam in the cat-and-mouse game. There were times, he also knew, when Barnes fully didn’t expect Sam to have found him. Two months ago was one of those times. Barnes had seemed healthy and adjusted. He had his own place and there was fresh bread on the table. Small miracles.

That did not explain why Barnes was in New York or anywhere near it in order to get the shit beat out of him by Hydra goons and dragged into whatever this was.

Barnes shoved himself up by the elbows and spit more blood out. So much for keeping the carpet clean. “So what the fuck did you do to land us here?”

“This is not an ‘us’ situation,” Sam objected with a snort. “What did you do to land you here?”

“Fuck all,” Barnes answered. He leaned against the wall next to Sam, tilted his head back to avoid gushing more blood from his nose. Sam had seen him hurt before, but he’d never been around for the fall out like this. He was like some stray dog, sleeping off the worst of it and trying to lick clean all of the rest. “You told me it was an emergency.”

Sam looked away from a smear of blood on Bucky’s neck to frown at him directly. “I did not reach out to you. And what kind of emergency could possibly make you come all the way back to America?”

Bucky’s head lolled over to him. A muscle worked in his jaw and down his neck as those obnoxious eyes scanned over Sam’s face. “You said Steve was hurt. Bad.”

“I didn’t. He’s not. That’s all it would’ve taken to get you back here?” he asked, just a little offended that he’d been traipsing around the world and digging huge chunks into his sleep deficit when there was a magic code to bring Bucky back on his own. And all it would take was Steve landing himself in a hospital again.

Bucky half waved him off, turned his head away again. “Someone must’ve really wanted me here.”

“I cannot fathom why.”

They sat in stony silence for too long. Sam much preferred being alone, he decided. At least then silence was just silence and not this crackling energy between them. Barnes broke the silence by coughing wetly again and spitting out more blood and tissue.

“Christ alive,” Sam sighed. “What’s going on with you?” He reached out without any fanfare to hold Bucky’s face and examine the injuries there. There’d been no time for any of them to heal, not that Sam would’ve been able to tell through the blood. “Hold still,” he ordered and reached for the hidden knife in Bucky’s bootheel that he knew was there.

“How?” Bucky asked. Sam was surprised to only find curiosity in his voice and not anger.

“I’ve seen you take it out before. Just had to hope it wasn’t something Hydra taught you and knew to look for.”

“Nah, that one’s all Brooklyn,” he said with a tired sigh. “Well, kind of. I adapted it.”

Sam rolled his eyes. The old-timey Brooklyn posturing was the same whether it was Steve or Barnes, evidently. He cut the sleeve off of his shirt and used it to begin cleaning away some of the blood on Bucky’s face. It was slow going without water, but Barnes was remarkably quiet during the entire thing. He let Sam work without fussing. His eyes remained focused and sharp, bright even in the dim room. He was more enjoyable when his eyes looked like this, instead of the dead shark stare he got in the middle of a fight.

Not that Sam was going to admit Barnes was ever enjoyable to be around.

“What do you think this is about?” Sam asked to distract Bucky from the fact that he was about to set his nose back.

“Clearly they wanted the both of us–Fuck you, Wilson!” Bucky shouted and shoved Sam hard enough that Sam actually rocked back and lost his balance, sprawled across the floor. Sam subtly rolled out his shoulder–it was definitely going to bruise–before he sat up again and glared.

“I didn’t think you wanted the rugged crooked nose look,” he defended without any real belief in the words. He was actually kind of worried about what the serum would do to a persistently crooked nose.

Bucky rubbed from the bridge of his nose into the soft, squishy bruises around his eyes. Already, impossibly, the color was draining from the outer edges of the bruises. Sam hated him for it.

“Clearly they wanted both of us,” Sam agreed and rolled his shoulder again. “But…they don’t seem keen on cutting off fingers.”

“Not yet,” Bucky grunted.

“They gotta know we won’t talk. You won’t talk. Don’t you think it’s kind of playing with fire to bring you here? I mean, you’re not even drugged.”

As if his words were a reminder, Bucky eyed the door. Sam knew he could take it out of the wall if he wanted too. He also knew that whoever these assholes were, they had enough manpower to bring Bucky in bloodied and rough. He figured Bucky was doing similar calculations in his mind.

“Why us?” Sam prompted again.

“Steve,” Bucky grunted. He leaned back against the wall and drew his knees up to his chest. “They wouldn’t bother to hunt me down, wouldn’t take that risk, for anything else. They probably think if they have both of us, they have twice as much leverage.”

“Maybe they couldn’t decide which one he was more likely to come for,” Sam suggested, only a little sarcastically.

“That man would rend the Earth apart for you,” Bucky said as simply as he would talk about the weather.

Sam tried not to blow over again. Bucky believed that. He wasn’t just saying it to be a shit. “Have you been watching us?” he asked, instead of asking for a thesis on why Bucky thought that so assuredly.

Bucky cut him a look. It was dampened by the bruises. “I had to keep making sure neither of you had gotten yourselves killed yet.”

“Yeah, you’re a real shining example of how to do it right. Show back up on American soil for two minutes and instantly get captured,” Sam snarked back. He needed to put some distance between his current situation and the fact that Barnes thought Steve would ‘rend the Earth apart’ for him. “Come here and let me look at that wrist.”

“Is this how you were with the pararescue?”

“Good at my job? Yes.”

“So damn pushy,” Barnes corrected. But he shifted how he was sitting so they were almost knee to knee and then held out his arm. “It’ll heal on its own,” he said. “I’ve had worse.”

“Or I can just wrap it and you don’t have to worry about rebreaking it later. Do you know how many carpal bones there are? You keep fucking them up, or the tendons attached to them, and you’re gonna be in a world of hurt for longer than you need to be.”

“There are eight,” Barnes said, just to be difficult. “Should I name them all for you too?”

Sam took half a second to glare at him before returning his attention to Bucky’s wrist. Barnes was long fingered, which was something Sam knew logically. He’d seen him handle weaponry. Seen him fight. Still, it was different when those fingers were laid out across his forearm, a little swollen, a little curled in, but still so damn pretty. Sam had never met someone with pretty hands before. He’d expected Bucky’s hands to be gnarled and scarred from a lifetime of fighting and training and abuse, but they just weren’t. The serum helped, he assumed. He wondered what they had looked like on the man from all of Steve’s stories. Had they looked like this, even working on the docks all day and boxing his way through the nights?

Everyone Sam knew who’d ever worked around boats had hands that were rope-burned and muscled and suntanned. He’d half expected Bucky’s to be similar. Instead, his hands were…not soft, exactly. But clean and smooth.

He pushed his thumbs into Bucky’s wrist, dragging them down his metacarpals. Barnes hissed in a breath and his eyes darted away from Sam’s ministrations. Sam returned his thumbs to Bucky’s wrist and then pushed down into his ulna and radius. He didn’t react as strongly to that, so Sam focused on the carpals that were up high in his wrist. (Down low? He could never remember how to orient the body)

“Where does it hurt?” he asked, probing for the misaligned bone but coming up empty.

“Everywhere,” Barnes ground out. “It fucking hurts everywhere.” But he didn’t yank his hand away, so Sam kept at it. Finally, finally, something snapped as Sam pushed his thumbs down into Bucky’s wrist for an umpteenth time. Bucky swore colorfully and snatched his hand back at that, rubbing his own fingers over his wrist while new curses came out.

“Let me wrap it a little,” Sam offered, holding his hand out again.

Bucky looked at him like he bit. Sam had read all the notes about the Winter Soldier. How medical treatment was administered. When the Soldier cooperated and when he didn’t. The Soldier could handle inordinate amounts of pain. Bucky Barnes, it seemed, did not feel like keeping the habit alive.

“It’ll be fine without a sling,” he insisted. “It already feels better.” And then, from between his teeth, he added, “Thank you.”

He was still bloodied, hair matted all to hell. He looked like some kind of wild man. Actually, he kind of looked how Sam expected to find him at the beginning of the Great Barnes Search and Rescue Mission. He came forward again, beginning to wipe at Bucky’s face one more time.

“You’re disgusting to look at,” he defended when Bucky tacked a lazy glare on him.

“Just admit you wanna touch my face, Wilson,” Bucky shot back.

Sam accidentally reopened a wound, so he tore off a piece from his demolished sleeve and stuck it to the gash like toilet paper on a shaving knick.

“You’re so dumb,” Bucky sighed as his eyes closed. Then he pitched right into Sam, almost completely boneless.

“Barnes?” Sam barked as he fought to get his hands under Bucky’s body enough to lift him again. “Do not fucking pass out,” he ordered, possibly irrelevantly. “Barnes,” he snapped again, and gently smacked the better, less bruised side of his face. “You didn’t say you were concussed. You didn’t say you had more injuries.” He yanked up Bucky’s shirt, prodding his belly and ribs for any signs of internal bleeding, but came up short. Just a bunch of outside bruises, maybe a crack in his ribs. He wrenched open Bucky’s mouth to check for signs he’d been coughing blood, but didn’t find any of that either. He was just about to shove his fingers down Bucky’s throat to look for a blood clot when his eyes fluttered open again.

He took a few seconds to recognize his surroundings–distressingly still and relaxed about waking up in a room he didn’t know–and then he reached up for Sam’s wrist and pulled his hand away. “Why were your fingers in my mouth?”

Sam rolled his eyes while he waited for his heart to stop thundering in his chest. Just his luck. Find the prodigal best friend and watch him die before Sam could drop him at Steve’s feet. “You basically begged for me to,” he scoffed. “Sam, please, you’ve just got such good fingers. I need them in my mouth.”

Bucky rolled his eyes, then grimaced. So it probably was some kind of concussion. At least Sam didn’t have to worry about blood clots. “What’s happened? How long was I out?”

“Nothing. A few seconds,” Sam answered. “Don’t do that again.”

Bucky saluted from halfway up his chest. “Whatever, man. I’m just tired.”

“I don’t care what you are. Keep your eyes open.”

The door opened then and a tall man, dressed like a movie villain with tall dark boots and a long dark coat, walked into the room. He had Sam’s phone in his hand and it was trilling with a waiting phone call.

“You don’t keep a passcode on your phone?” Bucky asked drily.

“Of course I fucking do,” Sam snapped back.

“Gentlemen, please,” the man said with a stifled German accent.

Steve picked up just before it would’ve gone to voicemail. “Sam, hey, I was about to send out a rescue party.”

Bucky looked at Sam pointedly, which Sam ignored. It was just a joke. He hadn’t been gone that long. Probably.

“Mr. Rogers,” the man in the coat greeted. Sam could practically feel Steve go still on the other side of the call. “I seem to have acquired not only your friend’s cell phone, but him as a whole person. And he came along with another friend.”

He snapped a photo of Sam and Bucky. Bucky barely flinched at the flash, but a few seconds later, he was still blinking and shaking his head, like the light was still in his eyes. The bad guy du jour tapped around on Sam’s phone and Sam heard it buzz in on Steve’s end.

Steve was quiet, contemplative for a few seconds. Then he said, “You have Sam and Bucky?”

“Yeeesss,” the man agreed with a lilting exaggeration. “I didn’t know they came as a pair.”

“They don’t, usually. But now that you do have both, good luck.”

And then the little shit hung up the phone. Even the asshole German guy stared at the screen in disbelief. Another man appeared in the hallway. He cast a nervous glance towards Bucky, whose eyes were shut again, before redirecting his attention to his boss.

“What’d he say?” the man asked. He was fully American. Jersey, maybe.

“Bad connection,” the other man ground out before stalking down the hallway. The second man hurried to keep up. The door remained open.

Sam nudged Bucky’s ribs. “Stop it,” Bucky grumbled without opening his eyes.

“If you pass out again, I’m not waking you up this time,” Sam lied. “What did Steve mean?”

“I think he meant we can handle ourselves. I just need to…” He grimaced. “I just need to rest my eyes for a little while. Then I’ll be good to go.”

“The door is open now,” Sam pointed out under his breath. “Come on, you don’t have some kind of super hearing where you can fight with your eyes closed?”

Bucky raised one eyebrow in consideration. It stressed a gash across his brow. “I can fight in the dark,” he agreed.

“I’ll keep anyone from hitting you in the face again,” Sam promised. “But we have to go now.”

Bucky squeezed his eyes open and leveled a calculating glare on Sam before he nodded. “Alright,” he agreed, which felt like a miracle in and of itself. He pushed himself to his feet and then leaned back against the wall as he pressed the heels of his hands over his browbones.

Sam stood as well and put a hand to Bucky’s elbow. In all their brief encounters, they didn’t get much time to touch each other, unless they were brawling over nothing but ego. Bucky was actually…kind of soft beneath Sam’s fingers. And warm. He was certainly not the sharp edged, battle ready soldier Sam kept finding. He felt real and alive. And he was still trying to blink his eyes open.

Sam curled his fingers tighter around Bucky’s elbow and pulled him out into the hallway. He scanned the unit for any sunlight that he could use to orient himself. Without speaking, Bucky pulled him to the stairs. They made it most of the way down before the wall of the stairs gave way to an open railing and they were spotted by more assholes in black.

“Y’all coordinate these outfits beforehand or y’all keep changes of clothes here?” Sam asked before he threw Bucky into the crowd of assholes.

He tried to keep his promise about keeping punches away from Bucky’s face. They landed damn near everywhere else. Sam had underestimated how many people there were–numbers growing from three to five to nine until he lost count. Bucky was holding his own, putting men down two-to-one to Sam, climbing to three-to-one. Sam tried to catch glimpses of the rest of the house. There was a wall of windows, covered in curtains and pasted over with film or paper. The rest of the room looked like a dining room or something. Behind them was nothing but more room and dark walls.

“Find the front door,” Bucky snapped when Sam’s eyes went to the window again. He smashed someone’s head down on the banister with enough force to crack either bone or wood. “I’m not jumping through glass.”

Sam rolled his eyes and then ducked away from a Goddamn hammer. He wrestled it away from the man wielding it, then threw it at the window to shatter it open. “There you go. No need to jump,” he said breathlessly. He turned just in time to catch someone around the waist and throw them into the wall before they could get the drop on Bucky, who was, if Sam had to guess, wrenching someone’s arm out of socket.

Bucky got a gun from somewhere and made fast work of everyone else in the room, but not before the guy who Sam had thrown into the wall smashed Sam’s head into it in retaliation. On the opposite side from the open wound Sam was already contending with, of course. Why shouldn’t the bruises match?

“You’re bleeding,” Bucky said, cutting through the ringing, violent silence that had fallen over the house. He wiped away the blood that was pouring over his own eye, completely oblivious to the irony. “Jesus, you’re bleeding a lot. What happened?”

Sam stared at him a little dumbfounded. “Are you serious right now?”

Bucky tsked away his bitching, yanking Sam over to examine his forehead like a collector looking at diamonds. “Gross,” he decided and then ripped the collar of his shirt off like it was nothing, along with a chunk of the bottom of it. “Don’t move,” he ordered as he folded the fabric over on itself a few times and then pressed it tightly over the wound on Sam’s head. He used the collar of his shirt to tie the fabric down.

His fingers were absurdly gentle as he worked. The warmth that had radiated off of his body was gone now, fingers cool against the bruise-hot burn of Sam’s skin. Sam didn’t realize his eyes had fallen shut until Bucky gently touched his other cheek and tilted his face down just a little. “Don’t die,” he said.

Sam didn’t have the energy to glare at him. “Pot, kettle,” he managed to say. He pulled Bucky’s hand away from his face and looked around the room. “You know this wasn’t everyone.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got the rest handled,” he promised and held up a grenade.

“What the fuck?” Sam asked, staring at it like he’d never seen one before. “Why did someone just have that on them?”

Bucky shrugged. “It’s not even a good one,” he said disappointedly. “There probably isn’t anyone else here, but at least no one will be able to come back,” he offered. He crossed to the window and removed the remaining glass with his metal arm, still looking at it like it was personally offending him.

They helped each other through the window with the unspoken agreement not to mention it again after this. Both of them had enough blood dripping in their eyes and rattled brains to warrant it just this once.

“You handled yourself pretty well without your wings,” Bucky offered as they walked away from the house. “How big do you suppose that window is?”

“I was trained before I had the wings,” Sam pointed out sharply. He glanced over his shoulder to reassess the broken window. “Four by six, you think?”

“Sure, the whole thing, but what about the cleared part?”

“Two by three? Four?”

Bucky regarded the grenade in his hand and the distance between them and the house. “I can do that,” he decided.

They walked a few meters more before he turned fully, pulled the pin of the grenade, and then threw it with an accuracy that would have more Cy Young winners seething with jealousy. Not to mention the distance and force of it too.

A few seconds later, the house exploded. Bucky was right. It wasn’t a very good grenade.

Sam looked around the wooded area they were in, a marginal field around them before the trees started up again, which was probably best because of the fire now. “So, where the fuck are we?” he asked.

“And how the fuck do we get home?” Bucky finished with a ridiculous perturbed set to his lips.

“Ah, shit, that asshole still had my phone,” Sam groaned when the patting of his pants came up empty. He knew Steve’s number by heart, but he didn’t imagine Bucky had his phone on him either.

“We could go see where he went,” Bucky suggested. “That explosion was not cool enough to take out any of the cars.”

“Neither one of us is in any condition to go track someone down.”

“Could be fun.”

Bucky was already looking at him when Sam glanced over to see if he was being serious. “You wanna try to live out the last third of an action movie?”

“Second third at best,” Bucky scoffed with a wave. “Lots more adventures ahead of us. The Winter Soldier and the Falcon has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“It would absolutely be The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Captain Good-Looking and The Grouchy Soldier. Angel and Asshole.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky interrupted, reaching for Sam’s hand. For just a second, Sam’s heart may have stuttered in his chest. But all Bucky was doing was unwinding the bandage Sam had put around his wrist earlier so that he could patch up the sluggishly bleeding gashes on Sam’s knuckles now. “Come on, Pilot Hyperbole. We’re losing daylight.”

“The Falcon and the Hound Dog,” Sam added, following Bucky as they skirted the smoldering building to find a car.

They drove away into an easing sunset.

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#sambucky #sam wilson #bucky barnes #captain america #sambucky fanfic #the falcon and the winter soldier #writing #whumptober2023

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