#machine-dove

MY DUDE!! I haven't been spending enough (read: any) time on tumblr lately, and I missed the update. Congrats on having supportive people!!

They like their little boxes, because then they can shove people and ideas into them and shave off all the bits that don't fit. Ontological browbeating in defiance of reality seems to be the default Straight White Male method of "debate"

I’m always a slut for prompts, so...

The thing was, Steve would swear in the years that followed, he really felt like him and Bucky had been dancing around this for months.  They’d been best friends for years, for as far back as either of them could remember, but after the weirdness that had been middle school there’d been a charge there, a spark of something humming beneath the surface of their interactions that both excited and scared the hell out of them.  

Or out of Steve, anyway.  He’d finally gotten the nerve to admit - to himself and his friends and loved ones - that he had a thing for both girls and guys at the start of eleventh grade, and while he didn’t have dates of either sex lining up to ask him out, it had at least cleared the air between him and Bucky.  And when Buck had broken up with his last girl of the month, four months ago (not that Steve was keeping track), and they’d started constantly hanging out together again, like old times… well, there was a nasty little voice in Steve’s head that couldn’t help reading more into it.

Especially when Bucky insisted sharing milk shakes when they went out after school, or popcorn when they went to the movies, or letting Steve borrow his Varsity jacket when he accidentally/on purpose forgot to bring his own coat to the Homecoming game they’d gone stag to.  There was definitely something there, something more than Steve had ever dreamed of hoping for - but while one mean side of him liked to point out the possibility of his best friend becoming something even more, the other, meaner side always shut him down: making sure to remind Steve as harshly as possible just how delusional he was being.

Because Bucky, even if he was single, had never once expressed an interest in being with other guys.  And even if he had, Buck was so far out of Steve’s league that it wasn’t funny.  He was smart - honor council this year, top of their class since he’d first transferred to Brooklyn in elementary school - he was on student council, starting pitcher for the varsity baseball team as  a sophomore, a key player in every drama production Washington High had put on since he’d started there.  People were tripping over the opportunity to hang out with Bucky Barnes, never mind the chance to date him.  And Steve… Steve was just Steve.  Scrawny asthmatic with a chip on his shoulder, painfully average student and GSA representative.  He was a decent artist when people took the time to actually look at his work, and Bucky swore up and down that he was funny as hell, but for the most part Steve knew that the only reason he wasn’t regularly getting shoved in lockers anymore was because he was most famous for being Bucky Barnes’ best friend.

Steve was an idiot for even imagining that he had a chance with someone as perfect as Bucky, but he wasn’t so stupid that he’d go and risk something as important as their friendship by asking him out.

Besides, they hung out so often that Steve felt he could pretty safely pretend they were dating.  In the deepest, darkest corners of his mind.  And if ninety-nine percent of his schmoopy fan art of late was based on an AU of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne as dorky high school boyfriends that maybe bore a little bit of a resemblance to the dumb shit that the two of them did together?  Well… no one needed to know.

It got more hits to his blog, at least.

That said, there were still nights when Steve’s stupid brain couldn’t help but wish.  So when Bucky had sent his text on the Sunday before the MLK Holiday, when Steve was already pouting about the fact that he couldn’t join him in their volunteer plans because his stupid head had decided to come down with a stupid cold, well… Steve couldn’t help feeling a little reckless.

Text from Bucky Received 09:32 PM

What do you wear to bed?

The worst part is that it all started as a publicity stunt - give Sam a twitter, so the country can get used to the ‘new’ Captain America.  Falcon had already been a hit, and Sam was likable enough.  Pepper thought it would be great for his image, for the transition.

It was mostly just a bunch of racist bullshit about Sam, homophobic bullshit about Steve, and… more weird fetish requests than he cared to think about.  After the first two hours Sam decided to ignore it completely, just posted his own tweets on occasion, repeated shit from the official Avengers twitter and other teammates tweets.

Snapchat between the Avengers group was far more amusing anyway.

But one day… one day when Sam was feeling especially masochistic, and decided to scroll through his tweets, he figured he would give the public what they wanted.  He hit reply on the 15th OMG POST NSFW PICS OF CAP AND BUCKY, PLZ then went to his camera app.  

The first photo he selected was from the first time he’d let himself into their Brownstone in Williamston, only to find Bucky trying to sand down a cabinet from *under* the 500+ pound granite countertop he had balanced on a fucking 2x4, while Steve worked on crown molding in the corner, precariously perched on a folding chair.

The second photo was from a group training session, when both of the idiots had been bored and cooped up in their apartment for too long, and had ended up challenging Clint to a parkour race that would have landed lesser humans in the hospital.  The shot of Steve eating it face-first into the side of a trash can while Bucky fell through the collapsed cover on it was easily the best photo Sam had ever taken in his life.

The third photo was of Bucky working on the ridiculous vintage ‘69 Camaro Tony had gotten the two of them as a fixer-upper present.  Apparently they couldn’t be bothered to find proper garage equipment, though… Bucky was under the carriage of the car while Steve held the damned front up for him.

Sam hit the ‘tweet’ button with a smirk, proud of how clever he was feeling.

It didn’t occur to him until a couple of hours later that he had well over 500K followers.  (CNN was all too happy to remind him while they ran the story of Captain America’s reckless adventures)

Things managed snowball from there.

Tony, being Tony, responded with a smart-ass comment from his official Iron Man account.  Sam laughed it off, but Bruce took it upon himself to respond to Tony’s comment with three increasingly ridiculous photos of Tony at work in his lab… managing to make Steve and Bucky’s exploits look like they’d come straight from an OSHA manual.

The Hawkeye account came back with a “LOL, BURN” tweet that was retweeted over 10,000 times.

The Black Widow account, which had been inactive since the entire SHIELD fiasco in DC, tweeted eleven tweets in a row - all of which were collages of four photos of Clint in dumpsters.  Obviously different dumpsters.

The Avengers official account came back with a surveillance photo of the Black Widow trapped in a belay wire - it was deleted within five minutes of posting, but still hit the news circuits with a frenzy.

Sam was impressed when he found Maria still smuggly alive at the compound the next morning.

In the end, they all got a stern talking-to by Fury and the team press people, reminding them of proper uses of social media and the importance of keeping their pranks private, especially when they were matters of international security.

Two weeks later, Pepper pitched the idea of the Avengers officially licensed personal protection and safety equipment to the Home Depot.

@SteveRogersOfficial tweeted his first message since retiring as Captain America.

ILU!!!

I don’t have nostalgia or us, yet (although I know how I’m going to use us and it’s going to be stupidly sappy/cute)

Seven, from that fic...

[Bucky] wanted nothing more than to simply shower and fall into bed, maybe sleep until noon the next day – but as he was stowing his gym bag under his bed, his eyes fell on the stack of bill reminders next to his laptop.  He gnawed guiltily on his bottom lip for a moment, staring at the photo on the wall just above it; it was a glossy five by seven in a cheap frame, depicting Bucky with his family almost nine years ago at his high school graduation.  

Light, from the AtB version of Peggy’s funeral

Had he not still been attempting to put a lid on his paranoia Bucky might not have caught the fact that the back door to the restaurant was propped open, with a sliver of light coming in from the alleyway that the place inevitably backed into.  He glanced around, pulse quickening as he looked for any signs of foul-play or the possibility that it was a trap, then cautiously made his way out of the restaurant, relieved to find that there was no alarm attached to the door. 

Give, from the fake date wedding ficlet (this is the longest sentence ever, wtf self?)

Initially they’d had trouble figuring out how to fill said days without being completely pathetic tourists, but luckily Steve had been able to find time for drinks with Peggy one evening after work, who was so thrilled to hear that he was FINALLY owning up to his feelings about Bucky (the way she’d gushed when Steve had admitted the identity of his date had been all kinds of uncomfortable, considering how subtle he thought his feelings for his friend were) that she was all-too-happy to give them an itinerary of things to do together.

That cowl is AMAZING, and I’m so sad you can’t wear it

STRIPEY YARN!! I admire your restraint, I…have none. (May I suggest…shopping my stash?) Also Canon Hand Dyes, awesome colors + nerdy book themes

!!!!!

Yea, this year was like…extra extra.

Initially I thought the pharmacist had hit a cutaneous nerve, it burned so badly going in - I’ve never had it actually hurt to inject, just the big sore arthrus after... so the electric pain shooting down the arm was AWESOME.

whereintheworldisbuckybarnes replied to your post: Is it just me, or did this year’s flu shot hurt...

mine was red and kinda swollen for a day or two, and itchy