#redsector-a

Clint’s an ex-circus brat and a goddamn spy and yet Bucky still manages to get the drop on him. Clint freezes in the doorway of his supposedly secret-from-everyone-not-Natasha apartment in Bed-Stuy, key still in the lock when he notices Bucky lounging against the kitchen island. Bucky is idly stroking one hand through Lucky’s golden fur, the dog (who is also supposed to be a secret, damn it) dancing ecstatically. Clint supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that Lucky has chosen to love an intruder to death instead of maul him. Not that he wants Bucky dead. Or even maimed. He just needed some space to get his emotions back under control. Three days isn’t enough time.

Clint’s pretty sure three centuries wouldn’t do it either.

He pulls the key from the lock and enters the apartment, trying to pretend his heart isn’t beating triple time in his chest.

“Guess you found me.”

A dark brow rises, metal glinting in the dim light of the apartment as Bucky continues petting Lucky. “Wasn’t sure I was supposed to.”

Despite the quiet tone, Clint can hear the hurt in Bucky’s voice and that’s the last thing Clint ever wanted to do. He shoves his key into his pocket, and then his hands so he doesn’t do something stupid like reach for Bucky right now.  

Bucky’s gaze travels the length of Clint’s body, searching for injury the way he always does. Then he nods to himself, pats the dog a final time as he straightens up.  

“I can see that you’re fine. I guess maybe I should have taken the hint.” He shakes his head, sad little smile curling his lips and Clint’s heart breaks. “I would have, I swear, if you had just said something. If you had told me we were done, I would have...”

He trails off and Clint can’t do this to him. Can’t be the one hurting Bucky, who has been hurt more than enough in this lifetime.

“I needed to find a way to tell you that... that I can’t, anymore.” Clint swallows hard. “The friends with benefits thing.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Bucky says, sharp and hurt.

Clint regularly jumps off buildings and dismantles bombs and he’s the best friend of the goddamn Black Widow yet he’s never been as scared as he is when he forces the words out.

“I can’t because I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.”

Bucky’s whole body goes tense, and Clint can’t breathe. He’d known he shouldn’t tell him but he’d had to. The feelings were so much that they were impossible to keep in anymore.  

“It’s about time.”

Bucky’s dawning smile is bright and beautiful and does nothing to help Clint’s breathing situation. Or his heart situation, if he’s honest. Then Bucky is in his space, pulling Clint in, kissing him like there’s no tomorrow, and Clint...

“I’m really confused here, Buck.”

Bucky laughs, kisses him again. “I’ve been in love with you for forever. I’ve just been waiting for you to catch up.”

Finally, Clint can breathe again.

~~~

Thanks for sharing �� I’ve been sorely missing seeing the spring gardens pop up around the city, and tulips are my absolute favorite.

My mother’s too! She loves visiting Chicago in the spring because of the flowers on State and on Michigan. Going to Macy’s and spending ten minutes outside of it photographing flowers is one of those “every time we’re in Chicago” things :D 

redsector-a replied to your photoset “I took a long stroll from South Loop to River North today, in part...”

A) Thank you (and your mum!) for the lovely flower pics! B) It's really freaking creepy to see Michigan Ave that quiet (I know earlier in the day you can catch it that way, but still - eeeeeerie).

What’s so interesting to me is that intellectually I absolutely know it’s creepy to be on Michigan at 10am and see it that way, but because I’m so used to early hours, to me it also feels normal. Running that area at 3am, and walking around it on my commute at 7am, it just feels like home. 

rumtastique replied to your photoset “I took a long stroll from South Loop to River North today, in part...”

why on earth did sephora board their windows? that seems like....overkill, or something.

I couldn’t give you the rationale, but they’re far from alone, they’re just the Most Dramatic about it. A lot of the stores that have long glass windows boarded them up; presumably it’s to keep people from breaking in, though if someone is breaking into your shop through a plate-glass window they probably are going to attract a police presence fairly quickly. A lot of stores also boarded up just the doors, so that people couldn’t pick/jiggle/break the lock and get in. 

junker5 replied to your post “I was supposed to be taking my mother to a concert here this weekend. ...”

�� I’m sorry, Sam. I know she misses you.

Well, we had a zoom call yesterday and Dad’s treating her to homemade whoopie pies and bbq today, so I can’t feel too awful for too long. But it is sad, to see the Chicago so shut down like that. 

unholydevilhost reblogged your photo and added:

what a pretty little cat!

Thank you! I love her :) 

digitaldiscipline reblogged your photo and added:

yep, that’s a cat asking for a manager.

Dearborn “Karen” Starbuck. 

noriannbraindripshere replied to your photo “I took a couple of photos of Deebs on the ottoman yesterday, not...”

she looks like she moved so fast it left a light trail :D

Ahahaha yes, good point! Head whips around with a motion blur...

lightwit replied to your photo “It is the ninth of May. THE NINTH. OF MAY. We are TWO MONTHS into...”

This is a common occurrence in Germany, at least, probably most of Europe. Every May around the 11th. We even have a name for it: Eisheilige = Ice Saints. ;)

ICE SAINTS. What a wonderful, blessed phrase. 

delphia2000 replied to your photo “It is the ninth of May. THE NINTH. OF MAY. We are TWO MONTHS into...”

Woke up at 9am to 51 degrees with a high of 61 for today. Congrats on being colder than Alaska!

Happy Valentine’s, @phaeshmae!

Once upon a time there was a handsome prince. He was strong, and he was angry, and he tried real hard to be good, but it turned out he wasn’t quite good enough to be the hero of the tale, so he fell off a carriage and he died.

Ain’t much of a fairytale.

Bucky read a shirt, once. Waiting for the lights to change, so he had enough time to read the dense text, even with the unnecessary size changes that made it harder to follow.

Either you die a hero, it said, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Bucky blinked and thought - or both. Both, sometimes, and it caught in the back of his throat and made him laugh until he couldn’t breathe.

So try this again, maybe.

Once upon a time a handsome prince woke up from an enchanted sleep. And where he had once been good, and kind, and a little angry maybe but with a heart of gold - where he had been all those things he was now cold, and dark, and lost.

It ain’t the kinda thing that ought to happen to princes. That ain’t how you get to be a hero.

Maybe he’s telling it wrong.

Once upon a time there was a handsome prince. And he was brave, and mostly good, and definitely funny, but he still fell off a carriage and everyone in the kingdom thought he was dead. He got captured, though, by an evil witch in a forest, a witch who turned him into a tin soldier with a clockwork heart, and the witch made him -

made him -

Bucky kinda wants to know how he skips to the part where someone says ‘and they lived happily ever after, the end.’

*

Okay. So.

Once upon a time there were a couple of boys. They grew up together, and they were close as brothers, and one of them was blond and one of them dark, which was a good enough indication, in the tales they used to read, about which one of ‘em was gonna go bad.

And there was this - this mirror, say. Mirror-blue liquid that changed everything it touched, and magnified what it changed so good became great, and bad became worse. And someone tried to steal the mirror but instead they wound up breaking it, scattering it to the four winds, sending it into the mountains and the deserts and the deepest blue sea.

And shards of this mirror found their way into the dark-haired boy’s heart, and he became cold, and unfeeling, and only good for following orders, and uncaring when he did.

And yeah, there were some enchanted sleeps involved, and some fighting and some giants and some endings, happy or not; mostly, there was the power of human love melting the ice in his heart, and ain’t that just some Hans Christian Andersen shit?

*

It turned out to take a while, for the happily ever after.

Bucky moved into the little brownstone apartment that Steve insisted there was space in, and started collecting hoodies to hang in the closet, and battered sci-fi books to stow away on the shelves. He collected ways to deal with his nightmares, too, none of which ever did much good. He found that the days when he slept best were the days where he fought his hardest, where he wound up sprawled on his back, bruised and bleeding and tired right down to his bones, knowing - 'cos he was followin’ a little guy from Brooklyn - that he was going down the right paths.

He figured hangin’ around this many heroes had to rub off on him eventually, so he actually found himself being the one to encourage Stevie to get in on the post-mission diner-dinners, the team training, the movie nights. He taught himself how to be human again from watching them carefully and mimicking what they did, and the first time he grabbed Clint like Steve sometimes grabbed Sam, knuckling the top of his head and mussing up his hair, he thought he felt his clockwork heart maybe skip a beat.

He thought it was a sign he was becoming a real boy; turned out maybe it was a sign of somethin’ a little more than that.

See, Steve was a hero 'cos he wasn’t the strongest, when he started. He wasn’t the strongest, but he worked the hardest, and even when it was tough he was deep down good, all the way down to his heart. Stevie was a blond-haired-blue-eyed fairytale prince, and he never needed the magic mirror to make himself into a hero.

And the more time Bucky spent in the tower, the more he noticed that -

It was like the inverse of the mirror. It was like the opposite of what it’d done. Like it’d taken the perfection of Steve and reflected it, until it had the hero he used to be. Not the strongest, 'cos he ain’t got powers, but maybe working the hardest, spending night after night after sleepless night firing arrows in the range. Maybe the best, deepest down, 'cos he’d been twisted and used and he’d come back stronger and better and determined to make things right.

Clint made Bucky’s heart beat all uneven, made him feel small and breakable and human in a way he’d never quite got back.

Power of human love, right?

It was a tentative feeling, a careful one that he was only just about learning how to live. He found himself smiling a little wider and living a little harder, finding ways to put his smile onto Clint’s face. He found himself wanting to touch, starting out tentative and small, and building into draping himself all over Clint on the couch, pressed into his side and feeling warm right down to his soul. And Clint seemed - disbelieving, at first, but then happy, and then happier, and then pressing their lips together wearing his happiest damn smile.

Thank you!

8- How did you get involved in your latest fandom?

In all honesty it started with seeing ToS comics on Instagram and thirst for Bucky Barnes. There wasn’t enough fanfiction for me so I started writing my own. Generally I won’t interact with fandoms but the WH community is amazing. 

23-  Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

The series/pair of fics I’m especially proud of right now are the millennial bucky/red room clint fics because this. This square on the bingo was a nightmare to me. I saw it and I thought ‘how the hell am I going to do this without it being a downright ooc mess.’ But I refused to change any of my squares, so I sat there and I stressed about it. And then I stressed about it more. And the stress birthed a plot and two fics I’m proud of. 

27-What do you hate more: Coming up with titles or writing summaries?

Well you might not be interested but I am and had no idea so thanks for inadvertently letting me know. :)

Sorry, I can only offer a companionable my day was long and just went shitty arm around your shoulder.

au selves making out?