the hero's shoulders
Series Metadata
Listing Series
-
you wanted happiness, i can’t blame you for that (tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable) by voxofthevoid
Fandoms: Captain America - All Media Types
29 Apr 2020
Tags
Summary
Steve pulls her into an embrace before he can second-guess the impulse. Natasha allows it, rigid against him for second before she relaxes into his arms, her own coming around him, loose at first and then tight like she wants to squeeze the life out of his body and into her grasp where she can keep it safe.
When they part, it feels like the end of an era.
Goodbye, Captain America. Goodbye, Avengers.
Natasha presses a key into his palm.
“Stay safe, Rogers.”
Steve watches her leave and keeps watching until the sound of the tires are long gone. The he turns around and goes to the house. The door opens easily; there’s no dust or wear on it. It swings open without the creak of rusty hinges. The driveway and the bushes beside it are well-kept too. As safe houses go, it’s one of the most pleasant ones Steve’s had to stay in.
He keeps thinking that right until he steps into the foyer and finds himself face-to-face with one Bucky Barnes.
-
Time heals as easily as it tears you open.Series
- Part 1 of the hero's shoulders
-
you are a fever i am learning to live with (and everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel) by voxofthevoid
Fandoms: Captain America - All Media Types
20 May 2020
Tags
Summary
“Widow, status?”
“I got him,” she says, sounding barely out of breath. “Heading to the jet. What’s the situation with Bucky?”
“He’s not a hostile,” Steve says firmly, more to Bucky than to Nat. “I’ll handle it. You two go on ahead.”
“And leave you?” Sam asks, flabbergasted. “Steve, that’s a terrible idea.”
“I’ll be fine,” Steve says. In front of him, Bucky’s eyebrows are steadily climbing to the stratosphere. “Catch up with an old friend, y’know. Take care, both of you.”
“Seriously,” Bucky says flatly once Steve turns off the comm again. “You always this reckless on missions, Cap?”
“It’s Nomad now,” Steve corrects, helpless not to let his mouth twist into a grimace at the old title. “There is no Captain America anymore.”
-
A man with a shield and a man with a gun.Series
- Part 2 of the hero's shoulders
-
this is the place where everything starts to begin (the wounds reveal a thicker skin and suddenly there is no floor) by voxofthevoid
Fandoms: Captain America - All Media Types
17 Jun 2020
Tags
Summary
They have an odd stare-off where neither party’s sure exactly what they’re being stubborn about but isn’t prepared to just give in. Shit like that keeps happening. Bucky thinks that he’s being granted a sneak peek into what domesticity with Steve Rogers will be like.
It's guaranteed to drive him insane within a week, and there’s probably something very wrong with him for wanting it anyway.
“Come sit with me,” Bucky says, needlessly aggressive considering the content of his words. “I have a broken leg.”
“You have a sprained ankle,” Steve corrects, but he obediently makes his way to Bucky. “You do have two cracked ribs.”
“I’m suffering.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
Steve doesn’t make Bucky get any more direct than that. His kisses are the best medicine. Doctors should bottle that shit, they’d make a killing, but then Bucky would be forced to make some very literal killings.
“Kinda like you like this,” Steve says once they come up for air. “You’re very sweet.”
“I threatened to throw juice at your head literally five minutes ago.”
“Sweet,” Steve insists.
-
Borrowed peace.Series
- Part 3 of the hero's shoulders
-
imagine standing in a constant cone of light (imagine surrender, imagine being useless) by voxofthevoid
Fandoms: Captain America - All Media Types
15 Jul 2020
Tags
Summary
After a mission that leaves Bucky covered head to toe in soot and grime, he slumps against a slightly charred tree and says, “You know what we’re gonna do, Steve?”
Steve, bent over and panting, raises his own grime-coated face to look expectantly at Bucky.
“We’re going to pull a Clint and get a fucking farm house in buttfuck nowhere and the most strenuous activity we’ll ever do is you fucking me through a bed.”
On the comms, Natasha laughs, loud and startled. Sam starts singing some nonsense song loudly, his preferred tactic whenever Steve or Bucky—mostly Bucky—gets a little too explicit about what they do together. It’s just the four of them on this. Wanda is off doing something with Vision that she, unlike Bucky, doesn’t get very explicit about. Clint’s on one of his quality family retreats and Pietro is with him, more or less a Barton at this point.
Bucky switches off his comm, but Steve doesn’t bother, apparently too busy staring adoringly at Bucky.
“Yeah?” he says, soft, too soft for where they are, what they are. “Sounds real nice, Buck.”
-
All good things must end, but first, they exist.Series
- Part 4 of the hero's shoulders
-
these, our bodies, possessed by light (tell me we’ll never get used to it) by voxofthevoid
Fandoms: Captain America - All Media Types
26 Aug 2020
Tags
Summary
Steve’s never been a coward. He returns the space stone first.
He doesn’t strangle Zola and leave him to rot, though he wants to. And it would be easy to just—tap his GPS and leave, but he’s helpless not to retrace his path from the last time. It’s harder because there are people looking for a man with Steve’s build and coloring, but the first thing he did when he materialized in this reality was tug on a face mesh, grimacing at the faint prickle of it settling over his features, changing and masking them.
Peggy’s not in her office this time. Likely for the best.
The old Steve, thin as a reed and with a scowl as big as his face, stands in a picture frame next to the one of Peggy’s family. Steve sets the compass in front of the man he used to be.
Inside, there’s a folded paper with a set of coordinates.
Steve drags in a breath that burns all the way down. He’s gone before he can change his mind.
-
A brave new world.Series
- Part 5 of the hero's shoulders
-
the gentleness that comes not from the absence of violence (but despite the abundance of it) by voxofthevoid
Fandoms: Captain America - All Media Types
17 Sep 2020
Tags
Summary
Steve has a way of swallowing the space around him, sucking in the air and light. Bucky can sympathize, all too familiar with the overwhelming heat of that body, stripping him to his bare essentials and laying it all in Steve’s greedy hands. There are worse ways to live and worse ways to die, and Bucky’s doing a little of both, each and every day.
But Steve looks as young as the day Bucky met him, while Bucky—who lost a whole five years of his life, five years that Steve lived—has laugh lines around his mouth and a grey hair or ten. He’s nowhere near death, but even with the lost years, he’s closer to forty than thirty, and he has the feeling that in maybe three more decades, Steve will look like his son and not his lover.
Bucky almost speaks, voices it out loud. But he doesn’t, holding his tongue so he doesn’t pour poison over this soft, idyllic evening where Steve’s drenched in sunlight and Bucky’s lost the tension in his bones and they’re a family of two men and a cat.
When that day comes, when Bucky’s hair is grey and his bones are creaking and Steve’s still golden and young, they’ll talk about it. But that’s not today.
“I love you,” he says.
-
A soft epilogue.Series
- Part 6 of the hero's shoulders