#brucebucky

Softly, With Starry Eyes

He reaches out to tuck a fallen curl behind Tony’s ear. Tony can feel the nerves sitting in Steve’s gut, but all he can feel is relief.

Maybe this won’t be so hard.

“Dinner.” Steve says, breaking Tony out of his thoughts. “We should have dinner first.” He’s smiling, and his fingers are still tracing Tony’s cheek. Tony reaches up to intertwine them with his own.

“Dinner,” he echoes. “We can do that.”

A shared emotions soulmate AU in which everyone expects Steve and Tony to angst over the situation and continue their antagonist barely-even-co-workers style relationship for Some Time, but what actually happens is a healthy embarkment into a strong and trusting romantic relationship.

I did say this is an AU.

Featuring; Tony actually wants a soulmate, the two most stubborn individuals on the planet, some rare-pairs because fight-me, and really not that much angst at all.

Tony/Steve, Clint/Bruce/Bucky, Rhodey/Nat, Jan/Pep, Thor&Loki.

 thank you, kind ghost

A long ass fic that leads into a complex universe, injecting a large supernatural element into the MCU universe. Written for @kiernaserea, it features Ghost!Steve haunting Tony as he grows up, and them eventually being able to get to know eachother.

Large focus on slow-build Steve-Tony, Steve&Maria friendship, and Tony becoming the Tony we all know and love.

Tony fusses over the bots quietly, but eventually he turns to where Steve stands, his hand not in the sling coming to rest on Dum-E’s head. “So you’re my kind ghost?” he asks, and his voice is shaking. “Steven fucking Rogers…” he murmurs around a smile so fragile, that Steve can’t help but quip;

“There should be a Captain in there somewhere.” and though his voice is breaking, Tony smiles and he’s laughing, and perhaps it’s slightly hysterical but the haunted look fades a little behind his eyes. Steve smiles back easily and lets Tony laugh. He stops eventually, propping himself up on Dum-E - who’s more than happy to stay there and be a prop - and for a moment he just stares at Steve.

“Do I want to know?” he asks after a moment, and swallows hard. “My mother-” he stops himself. Steve wishes he could pull the man into a hug.

“She wants to see you.” Steve settles on, when it's clear that Tony’s not going to speak. “But she doesn't want to make this worse.” Tony's eyes go wide.

“What the fuck is going on? Because you- you and her are very dead.” he freezes then. “Did I die, is that it? Or is this some form of punishment-?”

“No! No, it's-” Steve runs a hand through his hair. “You're not dead, Tony. I don't know how you can see us now, but you can, so that's a, that's a, a thing.” Tony's got one eyebrow raised at him. “You're not crazy, I swear.” Steve tells him, because he knows what Tony is thinking.

“So I'm just supposed to accept that Captain America decided to spend his afterlife haunting the fuck out of me?”

“If you could that would really speed this explanation up.”

The Soulmate Situation

A poly-soulmate, names on skin fic, where Tony, Steve, Bucky, Natasha and Bruce all share a bond. Slow-build, mild emotional angst, but mostly just them feeling out each other’s broken edges and getting together. It’s got a lot to it with no substance, at present. A snippet of the prologue, to give a feel…

Time likes to play games.

 Meeting soulmates two and three is something of a clusterfuck.

Steve Rogers isn’t dead.

(He thought he was though, he’d made peace with that, and now he’s in a future and screaming that he shouldn’t be here even if most of his soulmates are).

There’s a god in the room and another out to get them, and oh, Bruce Banner’s smirk is adorable but his walls are up (- and he’s furiously trying to barricade himself up behind them, muttering this is bad this is bad this is bad-) and he’s tense as hell. Tony’s never felt more alone in a crowded room that he does right now.

Three names in touching distance, and about as far away as they could be. No friends.

No allies.

He’s never been called a team player, and maybe this is why.

 It’s all any of them ever wanted to be.

 +

 Tony looks down, and they look up. Nuke in hand, Tony’s 99% assured of his own imminent destruction. Time will take him back too soon. He wonders if there are words.

They all do.

I’m sorry seems quite prevalent. Forgive me, hot on its heels.

They’ll be Tony’s dying words, if he does speak, but he’s no poet and there’s nothing worthy that he can make pass his lips.

There’s worse things to die for, Tony thinks to himself, and then the universe is stretching out before him. He closes his eyes to the endless abyss and the armada beyond with a smile and a not-quite prayer, and hope that wherever he’s destined for James will be waiting.

Steve smiles like the sun when he wakes on a roar, and Tony thinks to himself there are worse things to live for.

 Cross My Heart

Based, with permission on a complex ass idea of @goodmorningbeloved’s that I was very eager for, planned, and then had a very bad drop in mental health. If you vote for this, I’m going to need help. I can’t do this fic alone. The opening, to give a feel…

It starts like this.

 Tony glances down at his wrist. He’s in the rubble of New York where he was before. The same people are gathered around – he was gone for months, but he was gone for less than a moment. He’s not the only one surprised.

The X is still there.

A mark as if drawn on in black ink, like he’s seen on the skin of so many people and never seen on his own. He’s still waiting for it to disappear, he realises, but it’s not fading. There’s small changes happening to the situation; whatever he changed, it’s helping. The X isn’t fading.

He looks up, and finds Bruce before he finds him.

“Time is more linear than we thought.” Tony says, and then he starts to laugh.

 For Tony, it starts like this.

 Tony feels like he’s committing some form of cardinal sin.

It’s not unusual for the crossed – those with their soulmate X’s – to sleep with other people, even the uncrossed. It would be silly not to, so often people don’t know who caused the X to appear on their wrists.

But this is Captain America.

Fuck that, it’s Steve Rogers, who’s damn well meant to be untouchable to someone like Tony. He’s just so touchable though, and he started it.

When this all comes crashing down around his ears, Tony will remember. Steve started this.

 For Steve, it starts like this.

 He walks fast, avoiding people on the streets as they bustle past, avoids the alleyway and- wait. Tony walks back a few steps, and before it honestly registers what he’s seeing, he’s calling out “hey!” The two taller men step apart for a moment, and Tony gets a flash of blond hair from the guy they were kicking the shit of before they turn to him. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size? Maybe without ganging up on him like cowards?” The men sneer, glancing at each other, and with a sigh Tony holds open his jacket to show them the revolver he’s got tucked in his belt. “Pull the other one, fellas.” He says – god it’s only been a month and he’s picking up the slang in a way he never had when it was just Steve to learn it from. The men pale, and leave in a huff.

Tony’s holding out a hand to help the poor guy up, and it’s not until he’s staring into a pair of blue eyes he knows as intimately as he knows himself, that Tony realises he’s just fucked up.

There’s an X on his wrist, to match the one on Steve’s.

Part of him wants to laugh that he’s always been jealous of himself, and the rest of him seems to be sending in an error report.

“You didn’t have to do that…?” Steve trails off into a question, and Tony coughs, wishing he didn’t have to lie about his name but knowing he must.

“Edward.” He says. “And I couldn’t just let my best fella get beaten.”

 The middle?

Well.

That’s complicated.

 The Road Through Hell (Is Paved With Fucking Landmines)

Welcome to the best Worst Road Trip fic you’ll ever read; where everyone's crazy, the war doesn’t matter, and the only thing being counted are the bullet holes in Howard's Aston Martin.

A fic featuring Tony, Natasha, Loki, Clint and Sam going AWOL amid my version of WW3 to go and rescue the unit that Steve, Bucky and Thor are assigned where it has been lost and abandoned behind enemy lines. The war is in the background, this features SteveTony letters, ridiculous jokes and dark moments, but a surprising lack of angst. Hopefully.

 Treasure of the Heart

When Steve Rogers comes to see him, and wishes to find his brother, Bruce knows that to grant his wish will set a chain of events in motion. Events that could tear apart the kingdom, and will probably break his heart.

He says yes anyway.

Wish-granter!Witch!Bruce, pre-serum!adventurer!Steve, soul-forger!Tony, assassin!Natasha, half-elf!theif!Clint, dwarven!Thor, knight!Rhodey, cleric!Pepper and faye!Jan. Also featuring Dummy, Jarvis, You and Butterfingers as soul-wisps, a Peter&Harley&Kamala cameo, and a past to remain where it lays.

It’s a Bruce/Bucky fic, with an on-going plan that’s sat in a chat. I’m fond of it, even if it drives me nuts.

(If people were looking for The Stark’s High Society Orphans Club on this list, I apologise, but also promise that that fic is always on-going, but it also never had a plan. I’m still writing it, but it gets more attention than all of these and gets difficult at every turn).

@ishipallthings @itsallavengers @xtaticpearlsblog @codeflaws @savedbythenotepad @itstheallmother @reioka @agenderraskel @viudanegraaa uh… fuck, just, please?? Help me?? I don’t know which to work on and I’d prefer to work on something people would actually like to read!!

It was one of those days when it was hard to tell low clouds from the fog, and the whole valley was full of mist. They exchanged pings with the search drones in the morning, just like they did every morning unless they were actually out in the sub checking out a possibility. After that there was nothing much to do--no new building or repair projects to undertake, and the dogs were doing a fine job of managing the goats.

Bruce looked thoughtfully from the gray outside the windows to Bucky, and Bucky gave him a hopeful look.

"Yeah, okay," Bruce said. "We've got to see what the goats do when he shows up, anyway, right?"

"Yeah," Bucky agreed solemnly. "Just practical, really."

Bruce snorted and shook his head and went to change into the enormous shorts that the Other Guy wouldn't tear to shreds. Bucky went outside to see where the animals were, and found that the dogs were keeping all of the goats--there were nine now--on the stretch of grass where Bruce wanted to build a greenhouse, just north of the house and overlooking the ocean. 

So they'd get a pretty immediate reaction, anyway.

Bruce stepped outside a second later, squinting without his glasses and shivering a little in the clammy air, holding the huge purple shorts up with one hand. Bucky watched him tally up the animals the same way Bucky had, and then Bruce turned a crooked smile in his direction. "If I spook all of them into the hills, you're gonna have to chase them all down."

"It'll be something to do," Bucky said, returning a slightly wider smile. "Come on, get the experiment started. 

Bruce rolled his eyes, and the motion flowed smoothly into him turning slightly away as he went green, growing in a second into the giant.

Bucky jumped in the next second at a chorus of human-sounding screams, and ran toward the sound automatically. He realized a couple of strides in that the sound was the goats. He hadn't known they could make that noise.

The dogs were barking too--each one was a deep bass crack of sound like very small booms of thunder. They were circling around the goats, keeping them together, and just as Bucky reached them, one of the dogs bolted in his direction. Bucky planted his feet and threw up his metal arm, but the dog--he really had to name them, just to be able to say easily, the-slightly-bigger-one-with-darker-ears--ran past him to go after Bruce, barking his fool head off. 

Clearly he accepted that Bucky had taken his place on guard duty, so he could go press the attack.

Bucky turned to watch what happened next. He was pretty sure Bruce, even big and green, wouldn't hurt one of their dogs, and obviously the dog couldn't hurt Bruce, but...

Bruce raised one enormous green hand in the palm-out gesture Bucky had taught the dogs, and said, in a bass rumble bigger than the dogs' barking, "Halt."

The dog's feet slid under him as he tried to stop his charge, his barking cutting off sharply in confusion.

The dog who had stayed with the goats kept barking for a few seconds, and Bucky turned toward him. He didn't think when he opened his mouth, just did his own impression of a thundercloud to get in on the theme. "Boof! Boof!"

The barking dog stopped, staring at Bucky in confusion. That wasn't one of the commands he'd taught them.

He heard Bruce say in his giant's voice, "Good dog," and looked to see the other dog being picked up in enormous green hands like a puppy, flipped onto its back in Bruce's arms. 

Bucky looked back to the nearer dog--his dog, for the moment, as the other dog was the Other Guy's. The goats had quieted down in the absence of an actual threat from the Other Guy, and the dog was still staring at Bucky like he was waiting for Bucky to teach him what Boof meant.

"Doesn't mean anything, pal," Bucky said, walking over to the dog. "Just a noise. Got your attention, though, huh? Boof?"

The dog stepped closer, nosing at Bucky's hands.

"Guess that's as good a name as I'm gonna come up with for you," Bucky said, rubbing one hand behind the dog's ears. 

It only occurred to him as he said it that he had been waiting. He had meant to let Steve make up names for the dogs, the same way Steve had named him, when he was a kid complaining that there were too many Jameses on his street and Buchanan wasn't hardly a name at all.

Steve wouldn't have named a dog Boof. But Steve wasn't here--not yet. Maybe not ever, like Bruce had reminded him so many times. And even if they were working dogs, they deserved to have names.

"Boof," Bucky repeated, crouching down. 

Boof licked his face, which seemed like a deal, and Bucky slung an arm around his neck.

"Boof, halt," he said after a moment, holding up his hand, and Boof laid off the licking and looked at him attentively. 

"Good dog," he muttered, and Boof pushed closer again, pressing his huge head against Bucky's chest.

Bucky ducked his head and held on to the huge dog, reminding himself that what he and Bruce had here, it was enough. Even if they never found Steve, even if they were wrong... it was enough. This was enough. This was good, here. This could be a life, free enough and safe enough in this valley by the sea. 

He turned his head after a while to see what the other dog--Other Dog? It wasn't much worse, as a name, than Boof--was up to with the Other Guy.

Bruce had sat down, and Other Dog looked puppy-sized in his enormous lap, wriggling around as Bruce rubbed his belly. 

Bruce looked up and saw Bucky looking at him, and said, "Okay?"

Bucky nodded, giving Boof a few more skritches. "Okay." 

Bruce raised one big green hand, pointing with a thick finger. "Okay?"

Bucky looked, and realized that all the damn goats had run off into the fog. He hid his face against Boof's fur, realizing that Boof had decided it was more important to stay with him than to actually watch the goats.

"Guess now we're gonna have to get more dogs for the goats," he muttered, giving Boof one last scratch before he stood up said, "Boof! Goats!" 

Boof's tail wagged once, and he turned and started running. Bucky ran with him into the fog, knowing that between them they could find the goats and get them home.