Tag: fic rec

Sam Wilson, the hero

toli-a:

(see end for notes)

Sam never saw himself as a hero – not even when his father
spat the word at him, the night Sam’s family took him out for dinner to
celebrate his summa cum laude and
discovered he’d applied for the USAF instead of the MA/PhD.

“Just an act of rebellion,” his mother said, because Sam’s
mother had fifteen books on the ‘feminine in the masculine’ and ‘understanding
Oedipal mirroring in a post-structural world’ and she’d written the last three.
“Be glad he didn’t join a gang, Gerald.”

Sam was handpicked by the government halfway through Basic Training,
plucked from ranks of exhausted young men and one woman – the creation of masculinity through the oppression of the feminine,
his mother would have said – and his new CO clapped him on the shoulder. “Your
parents must be proud,” he said, and Wilson didn’t bother to inform the man
that his parents expected him to come home with tattoos and bricks of cocaine.

He went home with a tattoo, the Falcon unit crest over his
bicep, virtute alisque above it, No One Comes Close in the scroll below.
His father sniffed and went back to his medical journals, and his mother asked
if there had been a ceremony, perhaps some ritual consumption of alcohol in
this process of manhood.

Sam’s mother had sat them all down with articles on womanhood
when Sam’s older sister got her first period. They had celebrated the new stage
in her life and each handed her something useful to help her on her path –
Celeste had muttered to Sam that new
parents would be useful, but no one else heard – and Sam had never been so
glad to be a boy, until his mother had suggested they hold a similar ceremony
for everyone’s sexual awakening.

Reilly, though. Reilly was always meant to be a hero.
Michael O’Reilly was built like Captain America, over six feet tall with dark
hair and a broad grin, bright eyes that crinkled at the corners even when he
wasn’t smiling, dimples in his cheeks and a booming voice. There was something
about Reilly’s face that made people take a second look, that kept the whole
base staring for a little too long.

Reilly had designed the tattoos; he’d enlisted fresh out of
high school, five years in to Sam’s one, planning to fly until his wings or his
heart gave way. His older brother had joined the Marines, like their Dad, and
Reilly had gone for the Air Force to honor the grandfather who’d died over Nazi
Germany. (At least, that’s what he told everyone who asked. After meeting
Reilly’s older brother, Sam’s degree in psychology and Dr. Annette Cole Wilson’s
books suggested that Reilly had joined the Air Force to harass his water-bound
brother from the sky.)

Sam went home with Reilly for Thanksgiving the second year,
because the first year Reilly had talked nonstop through long days in theater
about his mother’s pie, and the Wilson family didn’t celebrate holidays that
reified the genocide of minorities. (In fourth grade, Sam’s teacher had asked
them to write an essay on Valentine’s Day, and Sam Wilson had argued that it
glorified violence done to corporate Italian bodies. Ms. Kupperman had not been
impressed.) Mrs. O’Reilly had met them at door, completely dwarfed by her
husband’s bulk and her American sons.

Embarrassingly, Sam had stood there with his mouth open for
longer than the son of Drs. Cole Wilson should have, shocked to see Reilly
sweep the tiny, smiling Asian woman into his arms and shout, “May!” (It was
another year and several more dinners before Sam learned that Mrs. O’Reilly’s
name wasn’t ‘May,’ and that he’d been calling Reilly’s mother ‘mẹ’
since they’d first met.)

“I told you my parents met in ‘Nam,
birdbrain,” Reilly laughed, taking Sam’s speechlessness with his usual grin. “What
did you think I meant?”

“I thought she was a nurse!” Sam
defended himself, and felt his cheeks heat up when Mr. O’Reilly winked and
said, “Oh, son, she was.”

It turned out that Mrs. O’Reilly made a mean Thanksgiving
dinner and seemed unconcerned with the commemoration of cultural extermination.
“It’s a good dinner,” she told him, when Sam asked, patting his cheek and
spooning more gravy onto his plate. “All my kids home. I show you pictures
later, my boys in school play. Mike was big turkey.”

Michael O’Reilly had indeed been a large turkey in his first
grade play. Michael O’Reilly had been a hero, from the insults he had fought as
a child – Reilly and his brother on the playground, slant-eyed kids with the mother
who couldn’t talk right, just like Sam had been the black kid in his private
school, the kid that didn’t know how to be black when their mother made them
volunteer at the youth center when he was a teen – to the wars he had tried to
end at just eighteen.

The thing about heroes, though? They never stick around long
enough to collect the medals they earn. Sam had stood on the stage next to
Reilly’s brother, both of them buttoned into their military best and choking
for air, the wrong Reilly accepting the cold, metallic honors his little
brother had earned while their mother sobbed against Mr. O’Reilly’s shirt.

Sam meets Steve Rogers in July, goes on the run a week
later, phones home from a burn phone to let his parents know he’s all right.
Annette Cole Wilson wants to know if this rebellion is to reinforce the
boundaries of masculinity in a militaristic setting, and Gerald Wilson tells
them to stop by and stock the first aid kit before they go.

In November, he puts down his gun and shakes off his wings
and brings the team to mẹ’s. “Where
are we going?” Steve asks, broad shoulders and a hero’s bright eyes.

“To look at some pictures of a big
turkey,” Sam tells him, rubbing at the wings of his tattoo. “And eat some pie.”

Mrs. O’Reilly meets them at the door,
light as a feather when Sam scoops her into his arms, a soft smile for the pack
of fugitives behind him, vivid aubergine lipstick and her son’s twinkling eyes.
“You stay for dinner,” she commands, beckoning them in, reaching up to pat Sam
on the cheek, rubbing her thumb at the damp spot under his eye. “All my kids
come home.”

Keep reading

Sorry if you’re sick of these yet, but– will there be any DVD outtakes with Rebel and Nick? Because that was GOLD.

spitandvinegar:

spitandvinegar:

FRIEND ARE THERE DVD EXTRAS FOR ALL OF MY DEAREST STEVE ROGERS/NICK FURY IMAGININGS?? ARE THERE EVER, WOW

(Some of these are exclusive to my precious AU Appalachian Steve, but many could apply to any Steve/Nick pairing across the multiverse, also this is OUTRAGEOUSLY LONG BECAUSE I GOT REALLY WORKED UP)

Keep reading

Listen guys this rarepair content

includes some very thoughtfully handcrafted artisan organic small-batch jokes if I do say so myself so you should read it even if you are incredibly weirded out by the concept of Nick Fury/Steve Rogers, the homemade pickled watermelon rind of ships

Excuse me, but can u tell us more about Stella’s bucky? him being 4f and all, how did they meet? Were they a pair of ‘skinny sick brooklyn mooks with more rage than brawn’? do they end up having a nice life without any war after stella returns home. which steve did stella’s bucky get? did bucky wake up and see a male version of his very pregnant wife and have an asthma attack and this steve knew how to fix it because he too has asthma? oh god

spitandvinegar:

Hi there, friend! These are questions I can answer!

They actually met EXACTLY the way that Seg and Rebecca did: They were eight years old, Stella was in a fight, and Buck initially thought she was a boy because she had a buzz cut at the time. He waded into the battle and they were basically best friends from that point onward.

-They kissed for the first time when they were sixteen. It would have happened sooner, but Buck was terrified of ruining the friendship, so Stella had to smack some sense into him with her mouth.

-When they were seventeen Bucky was crossing the street at night and got hit by a drunk driver: his left arm had to be amputated above the elbow.

-They got married when they were eighteen, but waited until Bucky finished college to start trying for kids (Stella’s Bucky, Sweetpea and Padre are the three most highly educated of all of the Buckys and Steves in the Abide multiverse).

– Before the war Buck was a high school math teacher and was constantly fending off advances from awkward teenagers who think he’s tragically dreamy. After Stella got enormousified and went off to war Buck stayed home with the baby (a neighbor watched her during the day), and Stella managed to jump free of the Valkyrie before it crashed, because she had a family who needed her back home. Later on she went to work with Peggy at Shield, while Buck switched over to tutoring students at their house in Long Island so that he could stay at home with their four kids.

The idea of Bucky waking up and seeing a strange man in his bed spoke to me on such a deep level that I had to write it for you, so here it is, friend! Which Steve he ended up with should hopefully be obvious. 🙂

Keep reading

FRANK AND JAMES OH GOD. I saw your response where you said it might take a whole other fic to work through their stuff and I AM ON BOARD. That was such an awesome surprise! THEY JUST NEED TO BE HAPPY. (And I love 616!Bucky so James and his mask tan line made me giggle into my coffee)

spitandvinegar:

Hi!! To tide you over, here are some

Fun Facts About James and Frank!

– Ok so in the story the first difference between their universes that they figure out is that Frank is physically different from James’ original Steve (Frank’s intersex), but there are actually MANY OTHER DIFFERENCES, and they start recording them in a composition notebook. James writes “shit that’s different” on the front of the notebook because he can’t help but be the way that he is. Some of the first differences that they discover: Frank can’t deal with spicy food (other Steve was a hot sauce guy), he loves dogs, especially big dumb ones (other Steve wasn’t a huge animal person), he’ll eat pineapple on pizza (other Steve hated it with a vicious firey passion and would get angry if he was reminded that such a thing existed).

– Frank is a lot less dramatic than your statistically average S.G. Rogers. On occasions when other Steves will say something in French to an enemy and then do a backflip Frank will just roll his eyes a little and punch said enemy in the face.

– Things that James has recently said out loud: “Holy fucking cow” “Jiminy goddamned crickets” “Jeepers creepers, you scared the shit out of me” “What kind of a dumb Dora do I look like, fuckface?” “the hot-assed gunsel that you see before you” “I like taking a big dick up my ass just as much as the next fella,” “get a wiggle on, assholes,” “At the time I was splifficated and neck-deep in pussy.”

– Despite ostensibly being the Oldest and Most Psychologically Healthy Bucky With Good Self-Care Habits and Self Esteem Whom Other Buckys Aspire to Emulate, James and Barnes have similar problems with stress eating, stress cleaning, stress home repairs, and stress vigilantism.

– Frank and Padre bond over this. “Mine had a flashback and then spent four hours regrouting the bathroom tile.” “Mine had a tough day at therapy and singlehandedly broke up a dogfighting ring.”

– James is so clearly and distinctly Team Mom that no one even bothers to joke about it. Like, you wouldn’t joke about your literal mom being Team Mom, either.
He is the only reason that the entire team isn’t constantly in a profound state of encrusted filth and low blood sugar.

– James REALLY LOVES KIDS. Like, a lot. And anything involving Bad Stuff happening to kids kind of fucks him up hardcore and leaves him all shaken and sad and in need of tending.

– Frank and James are the most Old Married of Old Marrieds. They
communicate through Significant Looks, they have weird circular
arguments that don’t make any sense outside of fifteen years of
relationship context, and often enjoy hyper-efficient Old Married Sex
where everyone has an orgasm and then falls asleep within five minutes
without having taken off their cozy flannel PJs.

– They have matching cozy flannel PJs.

– Frank has a truly humbling collection of gigantic dildos, because nothing but the best for his best guy.

– Frank is also the most macho out of all of the Steves, in this very straighforward dadly Mountain Lodge kind of way where he admires and respects those who enjoy Ladylike Pursuits in the same way that he admires and respects literal wizards. Like he loves steak, baseball, beer, sex, motorcycles, 900 page books about military history, fishing, sketching nice straightforward nature scenes, etc. He’s such a Dude that he mistakes James’ fondness for French food and clean grout and getting pounded up the ass for delicate feminine sensibilities. So like, Grant will joke about being “the sensitive artistic type” (Grant is currently very preoccupied with designing and hand lettering his own wedding invitations) and Frank will be all “Like James!” and everyone will be like “… no, not like him.” Meanwhile, James, chain smoking and looking at porn on his phone: “You guys talking about me?”

say um… could you tell us more about Padre Steve and his Bucky? And Princess? And also a little more about Frank Steve hopping dimensions to be together after the army of Steves and Buckies (+ 1 nat) beat Sweetpea and Honey’s Hydra?

spitandvinegar:

spitandvinegar:

I think that Frank ‘n James figuring their shit out would take an actual story, but HERE ARE SOME OF MY TREASURED PADRE AND BARNES CONCEPTS.

– Steve actually had been about to start pursuing becoming a priest before the war broke out. So when he got unfrozen and Fury’s all, YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU AGAIN Steve’s just like sorry, got a date with God, and heads off to get his BA, followed by seminary, so by 2025-ish when Abide takes place he’s been ordained for a few years.

– he does do the Cap thing when he’s needed so a few times he’s come tearing into mass a minute late covered in dust and blood and his congregation will be like FATHER STEVE WE SAW YOU ON THE NEWS

– He LOVES his job, he genuinely loves it, even the hard parts like all of the time he spends sitting with really old and dying people. He’s extremely good at comforting the elderly because he’s such a soothing presence, and he’ll engage them and calm them down by talking about happy stuff they both remember from the ‘30s and ‘40s.

– His Bucky (Barnes) is incredibly anxious, fights bad guys around the clock as a way of dealing with his guilt, and has a lot of trouble interacting positively with people who aren’t Steve because he’s so goddamn stressed out all the time. So Steve suggests him getting a dog so he can have physical contact and affection sans the whole people factor, and after some arguing Barnes ends up adopting Princess from a pitbull rescue. She’s officially Barnes’ emotional support animal, and is a very Good Dog.

– Barnes is totally obsessed with Princess, and though he generally is not a very chatty guy he can often be caught talking to her as if she’s his equally hostile cyborg assassin roommate. Like “Yeah, fuck that guy, huh? We oughtta pull his spine out through his ass. Say, are we out of milk?”

– Barnes tends to not eat while he’s working and then gorges like a grizzly bear the minute that the immediate danger has passed. After a tough mission Barnes will temporarily move into Padre’s apartment and just sit on the couch and watch bad TV and eat massive piles of food that Padre cooks for him and sometimes let Padre rub his back a little. He’ll also sleep on the floor with Princess next to Padre’s bed when his anxiety really ramps up. After a few days of this he’ll feel better and start getting self-conscious and spend a few days doing nothing but working out, drinking protein shakes, and avoiding eye contact.

– Barnes has a bunch of really intense piercings that are only visible when he’s naked and that he and Padre have a silent agreement that they will never, ever discusss.

– Padre is cheerfully oblivious re: how attractive he is, and is constantly missing people making innuendos about having sins to confess, kneeling, etc. Barnes catches the innuendos and gets really scary about it real quick, like touch my precious virgin angel and puLL BACK A  S T U M P

– Barnes and Padre are BOTH completely oblivious re: what a massive hunk of grade A American beef Barnes is. Stepanya develops this massive crush on him and all of the other Steves are, like, watching through their fingers because it’s so hard to have to witness this kind of next-level pining but they can’t look away, and Barnes is just like, “why does the Russian one always give me his Skittles” until James sits him down and is like, BRO, HE LIKE-LIKES YOU

– Once it’s spelled out for him and Barnes has had his little mind blown out his ears he approaches Stepanya and is like, “… I don’t really remember how human relationships work and also touching makes me nervous” and Stepanya is like SAME and they take their relationship to the next level, the next level being: they sit together at lunch time and let their shoulders brush together sometimes. Also they share snacks/socks/knives/bullets and spend a lot of time sitting around together in blessed, blessed silence. Sometimes Barnes gets really stressed out and wants to cuddle a little and Stepanya  a s c en d s

– That’s all I can think of for now

mukani

BUT WHAT ABOUT WHEN THEY ALL GOTTA GO HOME slash Stepanya’s Bucky??? can everyone just have like universe Skype or something

summercomfort

But what about ELOISE?  Is that in addition to the shield?  When did he pick her up?

– @mukani Unforch I think that Barnes and Stepanya will decide to say goodbye and go home eventually: VERY FORCH Stepanya’s Bucky is a total sweetheart who never fell off the train and makes a very dashing and handsome Captain America who spends a lot of time volunteering at children’s hospitals. So Stepanya will get to go home and immediately be fussed over and loved on by stable and together!Bucky, who misses him very, very much. Barnes will go home and probablymaybepossibly actually say yes the next time that Natasha asks him out, which she does about every six months or so, like “The offer to buy you a coffee is still on the table, big guy.” ALSO having practiced touching and communicating with Stepanya makes him much better at asking Padre for hugs and stuff, which is basically as far as Barnes goes at this point in terms of interest in touching. (Eventually after months of very patient wooing from Natasha he’ll work his way up to second base, and then wake Padre up in the middle of the night to report back, like STEVE I KISSED A GIRL AND TOUCHED A BOOB and Padre all “Buddy I’m so happy for you, say two Hail Marys and tell me all the details in the morning.”

– @summercomfort ELOISE OH HECK. Ok something to know about Padre: he has excellent self esteem and is much better at using his words to express what he wants and needs than most of the Steves (cue “I’m a priest, not a martyr” joke). During the Loki alien invasion thing Padre saw that ridiculous getup they put together for him and was immediately like, what the heck, where are the holsters, where is my gun, my shield is great but I’m not fighting the War of the Worlds with nothing but my charming smile and an oversized dinner plate.” And of course because he was entering the priesthood everyone initially underestimated him and condescended to him even more than they did most Steves, so someone gave him this giant machine gun thinking he’d be intimidated by it and give it back. But instead he’s like OH GEEZ THIS IS SWELL THANKS A BUNCH JUST WHAT I WANTED and keeps it. Fast-forward a bit: just as MCU Steve often ends up fighting in khakis or a hoodie or whatever, Padre often ends up fighting in HIS version of civvies: ie, clerical black and collar. And the Avengers quickly discover that while Captain America is extremely intimidating, being attacked by a superpowered priest with a giant fucking machine gun is just Too Much for a certain kind of (read: raised Catholic) bad guy, like they’ll see Padre coming and just … give up. A few times he’s shown up and just ended up immediately taking some would-be evildoer’s confession. So he always has Eloise with him even though he actually prefers the shield when he’s fighting humans and not aliens/monsters/Hydra (it’s his personal belief that theres a special place in Hell for Hydra agents, and it’s his job to get them there a little faster).

when u visualize sweetpea or honey in ur head, is sweetpea the taller/bulkier one? or is honey still smaller than sweetpea because honey will always be ‘tiny’ compared to sweetpea bc thats cute?

spitandvinegar:

Hi there! Sweetpea’s about four inches taller, but they weigh about the same because Honey is enormously, ridiculously jacked. Like, Grant and Stepanya are more yer lovely MCU-style Rogerses, but Honey is a hulking comics-style Steve. The serum didn’t initially make him that big: he has an incredibly strict nutrition and workout routine that he uses to make himself as huge and terrifying-looking as possible, because I AM THE ONE WHO KNOCKS is kind of, like, his aesthetic.

However, in a theoretical future where he and Sweetpea have nice peaceful lives together, he slowly drops about fifty pounds of muscle from easing off on the grim bodybuilding diet and skipping workouts in favor of staying in bed and snuggling, so he gets to be Sweetpea’s tiny little 6′2″ 200 pound guy again.

Sweatpea, on the other hand, gets more into his grooming/workout/self-care shit the happier he is – he was a successful amateur bodybuilder in the ‘30s and really enjoyed the sport – so once they achieve Peak Domestic Sweetpea spends a ton of time fussing with his hair and terrifying the shit out of crossfit bros (on one particularly Good Brain Day he manages to ask an especially annoying bro whether or not living off of the flesh of your victims counts as paleo), and Honey spends a lot of time futzing around in his pottery studio and eating noodles in bed and cooing over how big Sweetpea’s muscles are, wow, so big and strong, so sexy, while Sweetpea preens.

Avengers: the funny books

laporcupina:

The Avengers cost money to run and while Tony’s insanely wealthy, he didn’t get to be a billionaire in addition to the genius/playboy/philanthropist by being foolish when it came to money-making opportunities. 

Thus, the comic books. 

It’s a great idea, he knows it is. With the return of Captain America, there was a resurgence of all kinds of vintage Cap memorabilia and, among them, are the comics that featured Steve and the Commandos in daring (and, by today’s standards, incredibly racist, sexist, and everything else-ist) adventures. Tony’s got still a few – Dad had the whole run – and he thinks an update will go over well. The Avengers’ PR staff wholeheartedly agree, possibly not because Tony is paying their salaries. 

The New Adventures of Captain America is first off the press, packaged with a reprint of the original Captain America #1, and they have to go to a second printing within a month. Steve himself is perfectly happy to sign copies because at least it’s not the beefcake shots that Vanity Fair dug up and ran in the January issue. 

The Black Widow comes out next and it gets mixed reviews because the girl-power message got undermined somewhat by the cheesecake art. Tony doesn’t think Natasha’s the kind of pissed that will get him murdered in his sleep, but he can’t promise the safety of the next guy who catcalls out that her boobs aren’t as big in real life. 

Invincible Iron Man is the third and, okay, maybe the title’s a bit much, but c’mon, since when has humbleness been part of his toolkit? It’s a detective story with lasers, which is precisely what he asked for. That, and to make him look as tall as Cap if they were ever in the same panel. 

Thor has plenty of suggestions for his book’s story arcs, which is why the writer is credited as “scripted by.”

Bruce won’t give permission for anything to do with the Hulk, despite Tony’s assurance that this is a way to ‘demonster’ the Other Guy. Bruce says the Other Guy is a monster and should stay that way. Tony tries a few more times, but Bruce won’t budge. Which is why Tony’s sidekick in his own book is a genius named Bruce, no last name given. 

Clint will let them do a Hawkeye book, but the creative team is left to their own devices because he won’t even return their texts or emails. What results is possibly payback because it’s not even a superhero story. It’s an ironic hipster drama where the putative hero is really a shlemiel who is a complete failure at everything but being a superhero. Hawkeye is a runaway success, however, and wins an Eisner. Clint won’t go to the awards ceremony.

When Tony finally sees Barton’s home – and gets over the shock that it is a farm with cows and chickens and a wife and children – he notices that there is not only a framed and autographed copy of Hawkeye #1 under glass in the family room, but there is a commissioned full-color drawing by the series artist. Clint might not want anything to do with it, but Laura Barton is very sure this is the most hysterical thing in the history of ever and trawls eBay for merchandise. It’s been a shitball of a day, of a week, but the mischievous smile Laura gives him when he promises he can hook her up at the source makes it a tiny bit less awful.

[also at AO3]