Here's 300~ words of BuckyBrady, to help with some poll-stealin'.

Burning Up Then freezing Cold - BuckyBrady

Do we all like how I've got round the Clegan image header for a BuckyBrady ficlet? 😂 sorry Gale 😅

Little summary: Bucky's sick in the Stalag.

Word count: 484

“You okay, Bucky?” 

Brady watched as the taller man pulled the threadbare blanket up over his broad frame again, after throwing it off dramatically minutes earlier. There wasn’t much room for Bucky’s long legs in his bunk. Being a prisoner of war did not include sleeping on comfortable, spacious beds. 

“No.” Came a reply, gruff and annoyed from under the material. “I’m fucking cold.”

“I’m not surprised...” Brady had seen Bucky quickly succumb to one of the various illnesses that was ravaging the camp. Thankfully, their immediate group hadn’t been affected badly, yet. Bucky was the first in their hut. While life in Stalag Luft III had dulled Bucky Egan’s spark, over the past few days it had become even more obvious. Bucky had only really got out of his bunk for essential activities, other than that he lay in his tiny bunk, being what Brady would describe as “the most restless restful person ever”. Whatever Bucky had caught, it was messing with his internal temperature, meaning he was never content for more than half an hour with what he was wearing or what was over him. 

“I’m going to die.” 

Brady sighed and had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. He wasn’t sure if Bucky was being melodramatic, joking, or serious. It could have been any of the three. Men had died during the winter months, from illness, the cold, starvation, and while Bucky was sick, Brady wasn’t worried. There was still life left in Bucky Egan yet. 

“No you’re not.”

At this Bucky pulled the blanket back down to his chest, so it was bugged up in his hands and he could pout at Brady. It was childlike and brought a small smile to Brady’s lips. He’d really fallen in love with a gentle giant. 

“You’re not.” Brady repeated, reaching out to lay the back of his hand on Bucky’s forehead now he could. The skin he touched was impossibly warm. “You need to drink.”

“I’ve been needing a drink for months, Little John. This place could really use a bar.” 

This time Brady rolled his eyes. 

“See,” He handed Bucky his chipped, ceramic mug containing fresh water. “that’s how I know you’re not going to die. You’re still making your shitty little jokes.”

“Excuse you, my jokes aren’t ‘shitty’.” Bucky scoffed before taking a sip of water. “I thought you’d be glad I’m providing you entertainment.”

“I’m feeling more like a babysitter than an audience.” 

Bucky barked out a laugh before the normally cheery sound turned into wheezing coughs. Brady steadied the mug with his own hand and then guided it up to Bucky’s lips again. 

“You can’t entertain us if you’re sick.” Brady ruled. “Just get better for me, yeah? That’s all the entertainment I need at the moment.” 

All Brady received was a huff in response. 

“I’m too fucking warm.” 

The blanket was thrown to the floor again.

Title "East of Okay (Riding the Road to Nowhere)" for BuckyBrady

Hehehe look at you being all sneaky 😉 this is such a good title prompt 😫 and you can bet I'm taking it so literally... and yeah this is six lines not five. Fight me.

"Bucky, stop the jeep. This isn't going to help."

Brady had hurtled through the sky in a tin can this morning, but now his knuckles were white gripping the passenger seat of an army issue jeep.

"Is that an order, Captain?"

"Bucky, baby, please slow down at least."

As a reply, Bucky put his foot down flat to the floor.

why yes ofc anon! burned out stars, they shine so bright is the working title for a bucky/brady post-war story. Bucky feels lost in his own life so he decides to go see Brady. i'm writing it in chunks rn & i'm hammering out the themes but like, it's about being gentle to yourself and food=love so far. the bit below might change but i think it captures the vibes well.

So far this is 12,000 words of John Brady falling in love with someone he's pretty sure he won't get to keep. On the flip side, it's also 12,000 words of Bucky Egan having an absolute spiral generally so no one is having a good time. Hooray!

I'm starting to forget which parts I've shared but I'm pretty sure not this one.

--

There's no place for any of it to go, when he gets home.

Part of Bucky had gotten very good at insisting to the other part that he wasn't going to survive the war. It had lived under his skin like a prickly bastard of a thing that never wanted him to relax in between missions, you will die up there complemented almost always by its more devastating brother: and it won't matter. The only time he hadn't thought about it had been a few thousand feet in the air, when he'd had the illusion of control. 

The camp had made him crazy, too, because maybe he was still going to die but it definitely wouldn't be within his control and it absolutely would not fucking matter at all. He had chafed at being sidelined and even worse at the obvious truth that no one else was chafing like him, no one was climbing out of their damn skin needing to do something other than sit around and leave all of it in someone else's hands. 

Eighteen months is a long time to be shut away under the same sky. Bucky doesn't think he would recognize the version of himself that went in.

And now he's home, and that pent-up whatever it is refuses to fit itself into regular, acceptable unwarlike channels. He's not happy to be home. He spends probably more time than he should by himself, because he knows he's not fit company. Drinks, even though it doesn't really make everything softer around the edges the way it used to.

He doesn't see Curt much, anymore. It's getting harder to conjure up his face.

He talks to Buck every week, on the party line, so never about anything important. He knows the wedding is coming up but they don't really talk about it. It feels like giving into peacetime in a way that Bucky isn't ready to do yet, even though he knows it's ugly and selfish and Buck probably deserves better. He likes Marge well enough, but he doesn't want to talk about her either. 

He's in the train station once and catches the very edge of a scent that makes him pull up so short that a woman walks right into his back. He apologizes but doesn't look at her, too focused on scanning the immediate crowd, his heart beating light and fast. He's so sure, gaze skating over the profiles of strangers, that he'll recognize the owner of that hair oil that smells like spices, the ghost of tobacco around the edges. 

And then he doesn't, because the face he's looking for is hundreds of miles from here and he's an idiot. It breaks him so bad that for a minute all he can do is stand there, bewildered, and try and remember what he came here for.

He goes home.

I'm stoked that we're all stoked about this! There's a little snippet here, but here's another one - Bucky's POV from right after my man sleepwalked his ass right into the ocean.

--

Bucky tucks his whole face briefly into John’s neck. He smells like the tang of seawater, but underneath that he smells like himself, all the things Bucky’s gotten used to, and he presses his nose into his pulse and breathes him in. After a moment, John frees his hand from the blanket and cards his fingers into Bucky’s hair.

“Thought it was over for me, Johnny,” Bucky admits quietly. The words wreck themselves against his insides, a churn not meant for anywhere but the inside of his head, but he can’t help but to say them. He hopes John can forgive him. “Thought of you in the morning, having to come and drag me out of the water. Take me to the mainland. Just you – just you in the boat.”

Because who else?

He shudders slightly. The adrenaline is gone now, and the shape of his own death articulates itself in the chill he can’t shake, even though the fire is close and John’s body is closer.

John’s fingers tighten in his hair. When he speaks, though, he sounds the way he often sounds, carefully immune to horror. “The Germans brought me Harry Clanton’s body. Johnny Hoerr and I carried him around for two days to make sure he got buried.”

Bucky eases back just enough to see his profile. John’s eyes reflect the firelight, but he’s not really looking at it.

He adds: “We were lucky. It was cold, so he stayed in pretty good shape.” A beat. “You wouldn’t be like that, if I pulled you out of the water.”

Bucky hauls him in a little closer. If his grip is just this side of too hard, John doesn’t resist or drop his hand from Bucky’s hair.

“You’re gonna lock us in,” he murmurs. “We’re not going to find out.”

From the WIP ask game.

Thank yooooou, I can never have enough BuckyBrady in a lighthouse. Or long-suffering patient queer ally bff Gale, who finally gets to make an appearance.

--

“You get things figured out?” Buck asks. “With Brady?”

“I told him I knew I loved him a long time ago but never said anything,” Bucky offers, squeezing one eye half-shut, like the awkwardness of saying it aloud now is anything close to the startled silence from John after he’d blurted it out in the first place. “Which went better than you might expect.”

“There was a war on,” Buck remarks, unperturbed. “I’m sure he understood.”

“All to say that nothing is figured out,” Bucky says. “Because now I know I can have him. Which means I have to decide what to do about that.”

“Take it seriously,” Buck says, because he was there at the Stalag, when nothing would convince Bucky that he hadn’t done a misdeed, leaving John behind on a falling plane. “I assume.”

“It’s not about taking it seriously or not,” Bucky says. “Neither of us are going to live in a lighthouse forever.”

“You ask him?” Buck asks. “Where he’s going next?”

“No,” Bucky admits. “What if he doesn’t want me to come?” A pause. “What if he does?”