The Darkness Around Us

Steve Rogers is still trying to figure out retirement when he gets a call from his former team asking for his help. This time they don't need his aid with an end of the world emergency, they want Steve to help a new team member feel at home, when his real home is a universe away. Pairing Geralt z Rivii and Steve Rogers. The Witcher/ Captain America crossover.

I'm so glad to hear from you either way!

An expert from a work in progress.

Ship, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Title borrowed with love from Sylvan Esso's song, Die Young.

"Every night Steve spent in the new century, he dreamed the same dream. For 365 days it was the only dream he had.

Some days the dream felt like a source of joy, his only respite in a foreign world. Other days it felt like a curse, a promise of something that could never be.

On the 336th day he dreamed something else. He never dreamed the dream again, but he thought of it often, he could still remember every detail about it.

In the dream Steve was not in his body, but looking down on it from above. Not from the height of a human, but from someone, or something airborne. A bird maybe, or a drone, like Tony had, maybe. Although that part didn’t matter really. 

What mattered was that the Steve that was visible, was lying back down, on a dock. His body was his body after the serum, muscular, built to take up space. 

On the dock, above the blue lapping lake, he took up most of the space, but not all of it. Curling into Steve’s body, one leg slung over his hips, casually, comfortably,  was Bucky. 

It wasn’t a dream of the past. The docks he grew up with in Brooklyn, looked nothing like the one in the dream. They were grey and weathered, not to mention wider, built for work, not for recreation, like this one seemed to be. 

This bookmark has given me a little bit of joy for years:

It’s been almost 5 years since I unexpectedly reentered the world of reading and sometimes writing fanfiction in my 30′s. The first year I spent thoroughly entrenched in a fandom I enjoyed the canon of, and then I started leaping around, sometimes reading deeply, sometimes just reading the best of.

I know varying degrees about the following canons but all of the fanfiction listed you should be able to enjoy with next to no canon knowledge, and if there is one key fact, I’ll name it.

Lots of my favorite fics aren’t here, because they are dependent on canon but many of my favorites are on this list.

Also as far as ships go, all of these stories have them, and some of them are explicit, but the main selling point, at least for me, of all of these fics, was not the ship. Sometimes I cared less about the couple at the center.

I also love recs and am always happy to hear more (especially in fandoms not covered here).

Fanfic: The Dawn Will Break You

Author: thepartyresponsible

Fandom: DC & Marvel

Ship: Jason Todd/Tony Stark

What you should know about canon: Jason Todd was the Robin who met Batman by stealing the tires of the bat mobile and everyone hated him so much they voted to have him killed. Why you should read it: It’s one of the best fics in the history of fics. There’s a great podfic of it, it’s so funny, my husband and I have listened to it more than once. It’s actually the only fanfic that I didn’t write, that he’s read repeatedly...

Fanfic: Snakes & Crowns

Author: PopsAfterDark (knittersrevolt)

Fandom: Riverdale

Ship: Betty Cooper/ Jughead Jones

Why you should read it: Maybe the best soulmate fic ever. I say this as someone whose written 7 soulmate fics and read,  at least 200.

Fanfic: Life Sentence

Author: astolat 

Fandom: The Fast and the Furious

Ship: Brian O'Conner/Dominic Toretto            Why you should read it: The world building and the characters are just *chefs kiss!*

Fanfic: So: A Hollywood Love Story

Author: fourteencandles (thingsbaker)

Fandom: Entourage

Ship: Eric Murphy/Vincent Chase

What you should know about canon: Vince is an actor and Eric is his manager. They are childhood friends. All the most crass parts are probably softened versions of canon.

Why you should read it: Such a satisfying story with lots of really lovely moments and just the right amount of angst.

Fanfic: The Best Boyfriend Bucky Barnes Never Had  

Author: Annerp, Cap_D    

Fandom: Captain America

Ship: Bucky Barnes/Steve Rodgers

What you should know about canon: That Steve Rodgers was unconscious for a very long time (70ish years). Most of the key parts of canon should be ignored anyhow!

Why you should read it:  One of the best trope twists ever. Hilarious.

Fanfic: The New Hire

Author: asocialconstruct

Fandom: Captain America

Ship:   Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson               

Why you should read it:  As a former higher ed teacher it got a lot right. Great slice of life.

Fanfic: Drive

Author: AdamantEve

Fandom: Riverdale

Ship: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones

Why you should read it: Ridiculous in the best possible way. Such an enjoyable read. So funny in parts.

Fanfic: The Feel Good Hit of the Summer

Author: disco_vendetta (brinn)

Fandom: The 100

Ship:  Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin            

Why you should read it: Top notch outsider POV. Lots of fun.

Fanfic: Derek Hale’s Possible Heart

Author: loserchildhotpants

Fandom: Teen Wolf

Ship: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski

Why you should read it: funny and full of emotion.

Fanfic: blood sweat & heartbeats

Fandom: Riverdale

Authors: singsongsung, sylwrites  

Ship: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones

Why you should read it: Such a wonderful figure skating AU, heartfelt and nuanced. Friends to lovers so wonderfully done.

Fanfic: Lord knows it would be the first time   

Author: uraneia

Fandom: Teen wolf

Ship: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski

16 year old me would have spent a year internalizing this headline and feeling even worse about herself.

Peter wakes up slowly. His body feels overheated, weighed down by something. He attempts to remove the covers only to touch something that feels distinctly like skin. 

His senses wake up quickly after that, and he can hear an unfamiliar heart pumping, still steady in sleep. 

He’s underneath someone else who is sleeping, and that someone else isn’t wearing clothes. That scares him. Not that he’s scared of nudity in general, but it’s been a long time since he’s been naked with someone. It’s been a lifetime since he’s trusted anyone enough to sleep beside them, with or without clothes on.

He can’t help but react.

He grabs the person above him by what he thinks is the arm, and shoves them off of him. 

The person lands on the mattress beside Peter with a thump. It’s a man, moles cover his skin. 

The man opens his eyes ans says, “Peter.” There’s a warmth in his eyes that’s surprising. It looks a lot like tenderness.

To Peter this feels like another layer of shock, that this man knows his name. Peter rarely gives it out, and never to one night stands.

Peter sits up. The room he’s in is unfamiliar. Its walls are deep blue and book lined. There’s a framed Spiderman poster on one of the walls. Did he go home with a stranger last night? What did he do last night? He can’t remember anything aside from falling asleep in his own bed, alone.

“Are you feeling OK?” the man asks.

“I’ve got to go,” Peter says, and stands up. He starts looking for his pants, his shirt, anything. He finds his briefs first, and tugs them on.

“Did it happen again?” the man asks, he doesn’t look mad, just curious. His head is tilted to the side. He’s younger than Peter by well over a decade, but that’s not a shock, that’s Peter’s type.

“Did what happen again?”

“What’s my name?” The stranger asks, sitting up. He’s naked. 

This feels strange, surreal, really. Peter pinches himself just to make sure, but it makes no difference. 

“I have no fucking clue, we just met.”

The stranger looks torn between laughing and crying, but ends up shrugging instead. “My name’s Stiles. We’ve been married for five years, and together for ten.”

“What?” Peter asks. He’s heard about traumatic memory loss but that doesn’t seem to be what he’s experiencing.

The stranger bends down and plucks a pair of boxers from the floor and pulls them on. There’s a bright yellow batman logo on one corner of them. Peter’s never even had a one night stand with someone who wore super hero branded boxers.

“This has happened before. You’re not my Peter, you're an alternative one,” The stranger says, as he pulls on a shirt. At least there’s no logo on the shirt.

“I am not!” 

“You didn’t know my name till a minute ago, how could we be married? Yet I knew your name, because I’m married to an alternative version of you. One that wears a ring,” Stiles says, gesturing at Peter’s hand. Peter glances down. His ring finger is bare, it always has been. On Stiles own ring finger there’s a platinum band.

“There’s only one me,” Peter growls.

Stiles laughs. Big and loud, ending in undignified snorts. Peter can’t believe he would marry someone so immature.

“That’s what you say every time,” Stiles says. “It’s fucking ridiculous at this point.”