recs and links

Neither Bucky nor Helena knows quite who they are, but she recognizes him when she sees him. YES. THIS.

This is beautiful and amazing. It gave me chills and made me cry.

Bucky is learning to be a person again. Tony is fixing his arm. This is lovely. Aw Bucky.

Steve chases after Bucky until Bucky catches him. Warm and lovely and melancholy in just the right balance.

Bucky keeps slipping into Steve's bed because it's the only place he can sleep. Eventually, he sticks around until morning. Lovely.

bucky vid by lim

Really lovely urban fantasy AU where magic is always dangerous and Bucky is Steve's guardian angel.

Tony and Jane build a spaceship! AWESOME!

Steve gets hit with truth serum and tells Natasha all the things he'd like to do with her. Very hot.

This is a really lovely Steve/Bucky, Sam/Natasha modern AU, where Steve and Bucky served in a different war, but are damaged all the same. (I have some nitpicks but the story is totally worth reading)

“I wish they could print the truth, those comics,” Steve said quietly. “I wish everyone could know the truth of you, Buck. You’re so—“ Bucky snorted against Steve’s shoulder. “I’m not sure America’s quite ready for me as I am, Cap.” Lovely comicsverse Steve/Bucky.

Missing scene for CA2: how a carful of fugitives stole a piece of top-secret military hardware off a heavily guarded Army base. This is a really lovely look at Sam, with bonus Natasha badassery.

Nick Fury provides Steve and Natasha a drug that he thinks will help them question the Winter Soldier. It has some unexpected side effects. Mmm...Steve, Natasha, and Bucky take the equivalent of sex pollen and have a lot of hot sex.

Really lovely story in which yoga helps Bucky learn to be human again.

Bucky and Sitwell, on the run together after the movie. Steve and Sam follow. Aw.

“Jimmy, they call him. He’s a dear,” she says and she smiles fondly, the lines of her face smoothing as she does. “But he’s got asthma. He’s never going to be able run like you can.” “You never know,” Bucky says. “Doctors can work miracles these days.” Afterwards he asks himself why he did it, but at the time he just didn’t think. He rolls up his sleeve, turns so they can see his arm. He flexes his hand. “Prosthetic,” he says. Doris and Manjit goggle at it. They hadn’t noticed. How incredible. Isn’t medicine wonderful? Things have sure changed since Manjit’s days as a nurse. Nobody asks about the arm, nobody asks why. He really likes this gym. Bucky finds a gym and makes some new friends. Aw, Bucky.

Bucky’s dad always says what they do is important. “We give people the dignity they deserved in life,” he says, seriously. Uncle Danny laughs at that. “Jimmy-kid,” he says, “your old man has got some real trumped up notions of what it is we do. Death ain’t beautiful. We just help create the illusion that it can be.” Bucky really doesn’t like being called Jimmy but Uncle Danny has a way of talking that means Bucky listens anyway. “Cynicism,” his dad shakes his head. “Not pretty.” “It’s a business,” Uncle Danny shrugs. “Just more steady than the usual kind.” “A business, yeah, but it’s a business that helps people say good bye.” Uncle Danny replies, “We ain’t angels. We’re getting paid.” The one where the Barnes family business is a funeral parlor. Really lovely look at what Bucky's - and by extension, Steve's - family life might have been like.

Pulling together the scraps and fragments of her scattered self, Peggy finds the most immutable truth she knows: "There was never any harm in you." Bucky's laugh is dark and choked. "That's never been true." She unwinds her arm from his neck to free up a hand and touch the harder line of his jaw, the familiar and not-familiar curve of his mouth. "Bucky, you've always needed Steve and me to see the light in you, because you could never see it in yourself. That hasn't changed." His silence is a startled hush, his expression fragile as a bird cupped gently against her palm. Peggy finally gets her dance with her boys. *sobs*

“Darcy, you were given a drug that scrambles the messages your nerves carry to your brain and blocks the release of endorphins in response to pain. That’s why you’re in pain, and why it gets better where you’re being touched. The quickest way to counteract it is to work with the drug and use intimate physical contact to trigger your brain back into releasing endorphins. Do you understand?” Nerves, pain, contact, hormones. She understands the words. Darcy grits out something affirmative. Darcy gets drugged and only sex can help with the pain. Luckily, Steve's there to help out.

Natasha constantly amazes him, and yet he marvels a little and wonders how she manages to quiet her own ghosts. The past does not rest lightly on her shoulders -- he has seen the guilt and the determination to atone in her eyes -- and yet she carries it better than he thinks he ever will. Lovely, melancholy Bucky POV on his past relationship with Natasha and where it might lead in the present

bucky vid

ca:tws vid to the star spangled banner?

Bucky and Peggy bond over guns and Steve. Aw.

After the events of CA:TWS, Bucky still keeps an eye out for Steve. Oh Bucky.

Adorable outsider POV on Steve and Bucky's reunion, via the Smithsonian security guard.

He's still angry at Steve. Furious, even. Steve was the first to force him to remember, and Barnes may never forgive him for that. But with the cacophony in his head now settling into coherency, he realizes he's far angrier at HYDRA. Because HYDRA made him forget. He's not the Winter Soldier any longer, although he carries the crippling weight of those memories. He is no one's Asset but his own. And he can craft his own damn mission objectives. Bucky's journey back to himself, whoever that is now. Oh, my heart.

Bucky Barnes is a goddamn problem.

post-Avengers, Natasha makes it her mission to get Steve back out into the world. Lovely.

Bucky goes on the road to find himself, and has a few interesting encounters along the way. ELI, BABY, PLEASE COME BACK TO ME.

Bucky spends the winter in a homeless shelter, trying to learn how to be a person again. *sobs*