Stocking: Cathalinaheart
Dec. 5th, 2019 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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yougavemeastockingPlease leave stocking stuffers for Cathalinaheart here as a comment. Comments will be screened until reveals date!
Username: Cathalinaheart
AO3 Username:![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Cathalinaheart
Comics Steve/Tony: 616, Ultimates Bullet Points, 1872, Noir
Other Fandoms/Ships/Characters:Marvel: Tony/Rhodey, Tony/Bucky, Steve/Tony/Bucky
Star Trek: Kirk/Spock
Likes: Identity Porn, Soulmate AUs, angst with a happy ending, canon divergence, non-powered AUs, h/c, asexual characters, Hanahaki
Dislikes: Unhappy endings (open/ambiguous is fine), explicit suicidal thoughts, explicit suicide, hard kink
Non-fandom related requests/anything else?: I'd love to receive podfic of my own works or of others works. I'd be over the moon if anyone would draw something for one of my fics, art in general is greatly appreciated. Also not gonna say no to cute pet pictures :)
Username: Cathalinaheart
AO3 Username:
Comics Steve/Tony: 616, Ultimates Bullet Points, 1872, Noir
Other Fandoms/Ships/Characters:Marvel: Tony/Rhodey, Tony/Bucky, Steve/Tony/Bucky
Star Trek: Kirk/Spock
Likes: Identity Porn, Soulmate AUs, angst with a happy ending, canon divergence, non-powered AUs, h/c, asexual characters, Hanahaki
Dislikes: Unhappy endings (open/ambiguous is fine), explicit suicidal thoughts, explicit suicide, hard kink
Non-fandom related requests/anything else?: I'd love to receive podfic of my own works or of others works. I'd be over the moon if anyone would draw something for one of my fics, art in general is greatly appreciated. Also not gonna say no to cute pet pictures :)
no subject
Date: 2019-12-16 10:16 pm (UTC)Mystery Podfic!
Podfic from M_Samro
Date: 2020-01-07 05:22 am (UTC)https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yougavemeastocking/works/22155739
Re: Podfic from M_Samro
Date: 2020-01-19 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-17 02:17 am (UTC)--
Steve's heart beats a little slower than average. Apparently, it's part of being the optimal human, his heart is so much more efficient. Tony has known this fact for years, he read Steve's fist medical report after they dragged him out of the ocean. It's something else entirely to rest his head on Steve's chest and feel the beat.
It's a slow song. Soothing every anxiety Tony has ever had. Smothering him with the unique rhythm of Steve.
This is how he falls asleep now - cradled in Steve's arms, listening to his life. Tony has finally found his home.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-21 04:13 pm (UTC)Also, I collected my gift drabbles on AO3 so this is up there now:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339861
no subject
Date: 2020-01-18 08:42 am (UTC)https://66.media.tumblr.com/dc1dc5390acd1598f8b24abd5b301a7f/221a649d2ba47ea9-89/s500x750/573da4d1a8963c57f85f9be2aabdc9348663f1a5.png
and also some pet photos
https://66.media.tumblr.com/acb00da1ee1e99ffa2e21dcd039fcbab/c852777f962cbfc7-93/s640x960/1c3b6f9b0a514bf2d0212b67b2409d4b5e404ecc.jpg
https://66.media.tumblr.com/4034cf8fa586acf0c5702797e13c8462/c852777f962cbfc7-b0/s640x960/ce01354793104fe2afa2353803e69d9e18c3e051.jpg
https://66.media.tumblr.com/f7da9518c1cc58916ad553683e079178/c852777f962cbfc7-53/s640x960/2b6bb80fdd2e80ae1fa61130f554376563a018fc.jpg
no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 06:01 pm (UTC)So I take the tank, drop it right off at the general's palace, drop it at his feet. I'm, like...
Date: 2020-01-18 11:18 pm (UTC)https://archiveofourown.org/works/22308460
<3
no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 03:58 pm (UTC)I really wish I managed to get you something, but I couldn't make it in the end. I got you cute, fluffy, ginormous cats though! The entire channel is just kittens being cute and dorky, really. I love them all so much. Oh, there are eng subtitles!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLO16qUBUHc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0YYTWsSk5M
no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-01-19 06:12 pm (UTC)and when the sun comes (try not to hate the light)
Date: 2020-01-19 05:33 pm (UTC)~
There’s a vampire in the next alley over.
Steve knows it’s a vampire because, even through the sounds of scuffle, a man’s voice rising high and incredulous—“Lady, what the fuck?!”—he can hear only one heartbeat.
Anyway—
“Poor little lamb, strayed too far from the flock,” a woman’s voice coos, lilting and venomous. “How will you hope to keep the wolf from your door?”
—only a goddamn vampire would talk like that.
The terrible thing, the thing that will keep him awake through the climbing hours of the morning, shuddering in the darkness of his makeshift tomb, is that for a moment, he really considers moving on. He’s come to the city to disappear; it’s going to be tough keeping a low profile if he starts a turf war with the local vampiric population, and anyway the thirst is a low flame burning in his stomach, his throat, the base of his skull. He needs to get where he’s going, and quickly. He needs—
The first speaker again, all trembling bravado: “I said back off.”
Not a man after all. A boy, voice cracking on the last word. Bucky, Steve thinks, and the next thing he knows he’s standing at the alley’s mouth.
The woman—the vampire—doesn’t even turn. “Find your own prey, fledgling.”
The boy is pressed against the far wall of the blind alley. His knees are bent almost to the ground; one arm is outflung, braced against the bricks, while the other gropes crazily across empty pavement, like it’s searching for something. A weapon, maybe.
The woman hasn’t even bothered to enthrall him. She’s toying with him.
Rage closes over Steve’s head like a black pool, clear and cold and encompassing as the waters of his grave.
“The young fella told you to back off,” he hears himself say. “I suggest you listen.”
The vampire does turn then. Steve notes high cheekbones, patrician features, what must have once been olive-warm skin bleached sallow and grey in death.
Her eyes flash. “Leave this place.”
Steve feels the buzz of compulsion along his skin, raising the hairs along the back of his neck. He shrugs it off. “Not gonna happen.”
Confusion flickers across her face. Then her mouth twists into a snarl. “You will regret your interference.”
“All due respect, ma’am, I really don’t think I will.”
Things proceed very swiftly from there.
The vampire is old, strong and quick and cunning. Steve is stronger. Quicker. In less than a minute, he’s got her pinned to the wall, up against the graffiti and the weathered ghosts of band posters and community fliers. Missing: if found, please call.
He puts his hands to her throat, lets her feel the strength in his fingers. He could wrench her head clean off, if he had to. He’s kind of praying he won’t have to.
He knows God probably doesn’t hear the prayers of things like him, but the habit is hard to break, and it least it drowns out that other voice, bestial and exultant and born in the thirst.
Just give me a reason…
Beneath his hands, the vampire has stopped struggling, staring at him with wide, astonished eyes. “But— But you’re nothing more than a fledgling! How—”
Meaning he’s newly turned, comparatively speaking. Meaning, he should be weak. But Steve is something of a special case, and anyway—
“I’m older than I look.”
“Who is your sire?” she demands.
Now there’s a question.
“We never really got around to exchanging names.”
—movement from the shadows; Steve turned, too late—the sudden weight of a body on his and then—
“Anyway—”
—searing agony, flooding his veins, ice and fire all at once, worse than the serum, worse than anything he’d ever felt—clawing at his attacker with hands suddenly devoid of strength, knees buckling as each sluggish beat of his heart pulled the poison deeper—
“—he’s dead. Bet you’re wondering how I know.”
—a cry almost muffled by the roaring in his ears: “Get off him! Cap! Cap!”—a sickening, splintering crunch, the vampire jerking once against him and then he was grappling with nothing but empty air and dust—
“Unnatural,” the woman hisses, and Steve almost laughs.
Instead, he leans in close, staring her down, voice low and uncompromising. “This is my territory now. Keep. Out.”
The woman swears and snarls and spits in his face, and then she’s not a woman at all but a cloud of bats winging their way into the night.
Fucking vampires.
Steve scrubs his face with his sleeve, wiping away the acid burn of the woman’s spittle. So. He’s claimed a territory.
So much for keeping his head down.
It could be worse. The vampire will be back of course, probably with reinforcements but he’ll just… have to deal with that when it comes. And in the meantime, well. There’s a slaughterhouse three blocks west of here; it’s the reason he was in the neighborhood in the first place. At least—the flames inside him flare hot and bright as he tries to ignore the faint tang of blood on the air—at least he’ll be able to feed.
He doesn’t know what more to ask for, these days.
He doesn’t know what more he deserves.
He turns to the kid at the other end of the alley. The kid is sitting on the pavement now, like his legs have finally given out. One ankle is twisted awkwardly beneath him. Sprained, maybe.
Steve doesn’t offer to help him up.
Now that the anger and the thrill of the fight are ebbing away, the scent of blood intrudes more and more insistently on his awareness. Every breath he takes fans the furnace in his throat. It’d be better not to breathe at all, except that he can’t speak if he doesn’t breathe, and he feels like he should say something. Some admonishment. A reassurance. He used to be good at that, he thinks.
The kid is staring at him, wide-eyed. He doesn’t look anything like Bucky. Steve doesn’t know why he imagined he would. He’s around the right age, or at least, the age Bucky was when Steve first met him, but taller, lankier. Black, or maybe latin, his curly hair shaved close at the sides in a way Steve vaguely recognizes as fashionable.
The kid opens his mouth. “You’re—”
Steve braces himself.
“—incredible,” the kid breathes.
Steve blinks. His initial read of the situation was clearly off base. He needs to reassess, but his brain seems to be suddenly on the fritz.
“It was just, like, woosh, bam.” Reedy arms gesticulate wildly. “You think I could learn to throw down like that?”
Probably not, Steve thinks. He feels hopelessly disoriented, the past bleeding into the present as from an open wound. Has memory always come with a razor’s edge?
Bucky bounding into the barracks, brandishing a newspaper: “You hear about this? Captain America took down a whole ring of Nazi spies, single-handed!” Then, ignoring Caruso’s grousing—“Makes you wonder why the rest of us mooks even bother getting out of bed”—and turning to Steve with shining eyes: “Someday I’m gonna learn to fight like that! Those Jerries won’t know what hit ’em!”
“You’re one of those heroes, right? Like Spider-Man, or Iron Man, or the Fantastic Four!”
That jolts Steve right back into the present. “I’m not a hero.”
Not anymore.
“You should be,” the kid says positively. “You’ve got the moves. And hey! Maybe I could be, like. Your sidekick.”
Bucky, Steve thinks again, and closes his eyes around the pain.
“I mean, maybe I’m not like, crazy jacked, ‘my muscles got muscles’ MMA superstar, but I’ve got skills— Uh. You all right?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Steve grits out.
The kid blinks, as if remembering his situation. “Yeah, I mean." He sniffs and scrubs one fisted hand across his mouth. "Guess not, huh?" Then, rapidly regaining buoyancy: "But if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met you, so that’s like. Serendipity, you know?”
He starts to push himself up, then grimaces. He lifts his right hand, and Steve is assaulted with a fresh wave of thick, coppery sweetness. It’s his palms. He must have skinned his palms when he fell.
Steve needs to go. He needs to go, now, but his feet are rooted to the spot. His mouth has started to water. He can feel his incisors lengthening, pressing down against his underlip.
He can beat this. He can beat this. He has to be stronger than this, he has to—
The kid is on his feet now. When did he get up? Steve watches, transfixed, as he wipes his palms on his jeans, leaving twin, rust-dark smears in their wake.
“So I don’t know if you’re into, like, the whole secret identity thing—‘cause that’s cool—but I’m Ricardo. Ricardo Jones, but everyone calls me—” but Steve doesn’t hear the rest because the kid is extending his hand, his bloodied, life-warm hand and all Steve can hear is the wet thunder of the boy’s pulse, all he can think about is the smell—the smell of life, the smell of everything he can never have again. The thirst is an inferno, raging inside him, climbing into his skull, behind his eyes; he blinks and the world is tinged with flame.
He can feel his face twist and he must look terrifying, he must look like the monster he is because the boy’s pulse jackrabbits and he doesn’t want to do this, he can’t, he can’t but his body isn’t listening to him anymore, muscles tensing, ready to spring—
He forces the words out through his wet ruin of a mouth, “I said, scram!”—forces himself to turn and, with every ounce of coiled strength in his body, drives his fist into the alley wall beside him.
Brick dust fills the air; he hears the boy coughing as he bolts past—listens, without turning, to the frantic, stumbling sound of his footfalls. His stride evens out once he clears the alley. Steve stands there a long time, until the distant slap of shoes against pavement has faded entirely.
Then he leans forward, pressing his head to the edge of the crater he’s made as dust settles in his hair and the falls of his clothing. A better man would’ve followed the boy home—escorted him, even, but that’s… not exactly an option for Steve. Not with his vision gone red with bloodlust and the flames of his hunger still licking at his throat.
A better person would be able to master those kinds of—base, twisted—urges, but then, Steve’s not exactly a person anymore, is he.
~
The first thing he noticed was the light, day-bright even through the shutters of his eyelids. Even though he didn't know—not really know, back then—he still found himself cringing away instinctively. That was how he realized he was restrained.
He'd barely had time to take in the room—plain, plaster walls, the ceiling tiled with glowing panels of light—barely begun to start to pull against his bonds in earnest when the voice came, issuing from some unseen speakers.
"My apologies, Captain." A woman's voice, brisk and—blessedly—American. "A necessary precaution, I hope you'll understand. Just one moment..."
The bars across his thighs, arms, and chest released with a click.
Steve sat up.
A moment or two later, a woman entered the room. Her hair was cut mannishly short, and the insignia on her unfamiliar uniform proclaimed her to be a colonel. Steve had never heard of a woman colonel, much less one whose uniform included pants.
"I've told my staff to wait outside," she said, and even disoriented as he was, Steve could pick out the warning behind the words--whoever she was, she had not come alone. "They're all eager to meet you, but I'm sure you're overwhelmed enough as it is, and anyway, I thought it best you hear this from someone who's served. Someone who understands." Her eyes crinkled as she smiled. "We won the war. Welcome home."
She introduced herself as Colonel Rachel Stoner, Director of SHIELD. "You won't have heard of us—most people haven't—but I can assure you, we're as American as apple pie. Been around since the Cold War—though of course, that would still be after your time. You've been asleep for a very long time, Captain Rogers."
Steve's head was spinning. He was more than half convinced it was some kind of trick, except what kind of Nazi would ever dream of making a woman into an officer, even as a trap, and anyway, there was the light, brilliant and wholly alien in its artificiality.
And if there was a chance, any chance at all, he had to know—
"What happened to Bucky?"
The colonel's face went pinched and somber. "James Barnes? Died in the explosion. We never recovered the body. I'm sorry, Captain, I assumed you knew. Nothing human could've survived that fall."
Human, Steve thought, distantly. The look on Bucky's face as he slipped from Steve's grasp...
"I understand this must be very fresh. If you need a moment..."
"You know who I am," Steve said. Captain Rogers, she'd called him; that, more than anything else, made him want to believe her story. He could count on two hands the number of people who knew Cap's real identity.
The colonel's eyebrows shot skyward. "Of course! Steven Rogers, born July 4th, 1922 to Irish immigrants Sarah and Joseph Rogers. The hero of Ardennes. It really is an honor. You were Captain America!"
The past tense dropped like an anvil into his ears, even as the colonel continued, something sharpening behind her eyes.
"As to what you are now, though. Well. I think that's a bit more interesting, don't you?"
Re: and when the sun comes (try not to hate the light)
Date: 2020-01-19 06:11 pm (UTC)Re: and when the sun comes (try not to hate the light)
Date: 2020-01-19 10:43 pm (UTC)