This is going to be in the Hour of Our Death series at some point, or is in that continuity, anyway, but I just can’t figure out where or when. It came to me kind of entire a little while ago, and I wrote it, and I’ve been sitting on it, and I just– it wants out, so I’m posting it here, at least temporarily. (For anyone not reading that series, Full of Grace has as one of its major plot points that Bucky’s trying to avoid disappearing into a basement after his inevitable recapture by making a series of videos that go viral on the Internet, so– there’s none of his POV in the story, except the videos, which he mostly narrates.)
It’s A Funny Story, 2400ish words, tw for descriptions of gore and depersonalization: The Winter Soldier tells the viewer all about cryostasis.
“I got a story,” the Soldier said without preamble, sitting back from the camera. He was shirtless, illuminated by silvery natural light from an offscreen window to his left. “I got a story I gotta tell. I don’t got names or dates or nothin’, I just, I gotta tell it. I was thinkin’ about this and I just– I don’t know if there’s a point, lemme tell it and I’ll figure it out.”
He sat back in the rickety wooden chair he was in, which creaked in protest at his weight, and crossed his arms across his chest, metal over flesh. “So here’s the thing with– I was readin’ documentation on this, I know now I’m the only one ever to survive cryo, and I know people been, like, debating it. Like, it could help real people or something, and I gotta tell you, no. Just– no. It’s– no.” He sat forward. “In the docs it talks about some stuff that sounds all medical and sterile and boring and whatever.” He gestured with the metal hand, a flyaway gesture. His hair was loose and fell in his face, and he shook it back absently, a practiced gesture. “Subject experienced tissue damage, organ function compromised, acclimatization period blah blah. Skin sensitivity, I remember that phrase. So like– the only reason I survived thawing was that I got amped tissue regeneration. I got a healing factor. And it’s like– it’s a doozy. Okay? I know they tried to duplicate it, it gave all the subjects like–” He closed his eyes, shook his head quickly, “fast-acting face cancer or some shit. Don’t fuck with it.” He grimaced. “It’s not– actually a picnic. Is the thing. Anyway.”
He sat back a little, shoving his hair back more with his skin hand. “I could try to tell you how fuckin’ nasty it was, but I’m gonna tell you a story instead. So imagine– I don’t know what year it was. I don’t know how long I’d been in cryo. I know it was some kind of party. Whoever had me in his department, he was having some kind of shindig, showing off for other people, right? So you know how sometimes nowadays– well, everybody’s got a freezer. And you see it on sitcoms and memes and things.” He glanced up. “You see like, Mom asks the kids to take the chicken out of the freezer to defrost it so she can make dinner when she gets home, right?” His eyes were very blue in the indirect light, a cloudy hazeled blue, and he cocked an eyebrow. “And the punchline is, the kid forgets to take the chicken out and then the mom is super mad.”
He gestured. “Whoever was in charge of getting me out of cryo didn’t leave enough time.
Tag: fic fragment
Like, thanks, Winter, for holding off until like two months late and then suddenly shitting all over me and my family. My baby sister left midday yesterday for a 2-day drive out Midwest to visit in-laws, and she and her husband and baby had to white-knuckle it through four inches of slush in Indiana; meanwhile my older sister and her husband and two dogs and three kids left first thing this morning and had to deal with the tail-end of the same huge storm system crapping freezing dribbles on them and slowing them enough that they got stuck in DC rush hour traffic enroute to their Georgia home. We hit bad snow about 3 hours into the 5-hour drive and it was real bad for a bit there. And it’s going to be 45 and raining tomorrow.
WTF anyway. I spent the drive first reading the gift fic I got in the first fic exchange I ever did, which was an adorable and elaborate bit of… I’d describe it as earnest sweetness. I’ll have to go back and reread it tomorrow and comment more intelligently– I just reblogged the post with the link, and it’s really delightful. The formatting was a bit messed up on my e-reader though, so I look forward to giving it another readthrough in a proper browser.
Then I read the literal actual novel I wrote while trying to come up with the fic I eventually wrote for my part of the exchange. I seriously wrote 50k of an AU that didn’t even have the correct pairings in it. I got off on the wrong footing, stumbled around, hit a tangent and started going, and couldn’t tear myself away even when I realized it was utterly unsuitable. And rereading it…
I could file the serial numbers off this one and do an original novel, like I’d been considering for literally years. Nothing else I’ve ever done would really work; all my epics are too based in canon of whatever thing I’m working off of to work. But this one was an AU enough that I could actually just shift everything about six inches to the left and be fine. It’s really tempting.
It’d probably be 100k long or more by the time I was done, but– I mean– why not?
Free sample:
Ficlet series: outtakes from before I fell down the rabbit hole and wrote an epic. (This is how I write epics, btw, I open a document and start writing things that amuse me until I suddenly get sucked into A PIT OF FEELS and that’s where the plot comes from.)
Bucky Barnes makes hilarious, sometimes-serious videos as part of his recovery.
Part Three:
The text appeared, bright yellow, on a blank black screen. Bucky Barnes’ Children’s Funtime Corner.
The Benny Hill theme started playing over a montage of images. Steve ran by, in workout gear, obviously just jogging for fitness, and suddenly Bucky dropped from above the frame, wrapped his thighs around his neck, and took him to the floor. “Ow,” Steve said, off-camera, weakly.
Sam came down a hallway in his underpants (exceedingly flattering boxer briefs), looking morning-sleepy and half-conscious (and fucking glorious), shuffling stiffly and yawning. Bucky jumped out at him and Sam screamed and reflexively punched Bucky so hard they both fell over.
I have crawled out of my cobwebbed tomb in the midnight gloaming
In order to post this self-indulgent bullshit in which characters from my various fictional fanthings meet each other. Like, it’s just Bucky and Steve from Ain’t No Grave meeting some Buckys and Steves from Except it Abide. That’s it. That’s the plot. So like, I guess you should read it if you’re kinky like that. There’s cussing, lots of sex jokes, and some light violence, but the only other naughtiness it contains is how gotdamn masturbatory writing fanfiction of ones own fanfiction is. So like, read it if you’re kinky like that, I guess!
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