Fairest Of Them All (Eleven)

Clintucky (WinterHawk)

Based entirely off of THIS PICTURE by the talented @shan101pi and written in approximately seven minutes so I didn’t forget the idea:

ALSO, I feel like this could use a dozen or so more chapters. 

ALSO If I write more, I’ll probably call it “Greener Pastures” or something like that, but Clintucky made me laugh so hard I ugly snorted so… you know :) 

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The woman at the bar in town had told Bucky the farm was “not quite hollerin’ distance from the bridge, but close enough to be called a walk”. 

Bucky didn’t know what the hell those directions meant, but there was a driveway a short walk from the end of the bridge and a gate with a handwritten sign proclaiming “Free Chikkens if you can Catch’ Em” and since it was the only gate he’d seen since leaving town nearly an hour previous, he figured this was the one the redhead had meant. 

Farm work wasn’t exactly Bucky’s idea of a good time, but he needed money and he needed a lowkey place to hide stay for a few months and after hitching a ride with a trucker in Chicago and ending up in the middle of Cornfield, USA– well, this was good a spot as any to hunker down for a while. 

The lane was longer than Bucky had expected, and after an hours hike from town he was puffing a little when he finally made the turn around a corner and came up on a big farmhouse that looked like something out of those cheesy Americana pictures– picket fences and white shutters and a big porch with a couple rocking chairs. 

Bucky half expected to smell apple pie and see a hound dog lazing around in the shade, maybe spy a couple of bare foot brats running round in the creek, but even after standing in the yard for a few minutes, Bucky didn’t see anyone or hear anything other than the noise of animals in the distance. 

Upon closer inspection, it was obvious the farm house wasn’t quite as perfect as he’d first thought– shutters hanging sideways and paint peeling. The rocking chair leg was broken and the porch steps sagged alarmingly when Bucky walked up and one of the windows was broken, a sheet of plastic stretched over the frame to keep the weather out. 

“Hello?” Bucky called, his hand automatically twitching towards the gun tucked in back of his pants. He didn’t like the emptiness and he didn’t like the silence. “Anyone here? Hello? Girl in town said you needed some help out here, is anyone here?” 

Quiet for another moment and then Bucky tipped his head to the side, thinking he’d heard a voice around back. 

“Hello?” He avoided the squeaky porch and went down to the yard and around to the barn he’d glimpsed coming up the road. “Anyone back here? I’m looking for some work?” 

There was definitely a voice coming from the barn and Bucky approached the double doors cautiously, not wanting to startle anyone who might be holding a rifle or some other farm implement that could double as a weapon. 

“Hello?” he called again. “I’m looking for the guy that owns this place….?” he poked his head around the doors and stopped in his tracks. “Um… what is going on here?” 

The man in the middle of the barn was being chased around by what could only be an army of chicks, fluffy balls of yellow armed with sharp beaks and the most obnoxious peeps in the world, shouting, “No no no! I was trying to feed you! Don’t turn on me like this!” 

The guy stopped abruptly when he saw Bucky at the door. “Oh. Hey look at that. Can I help–” he looked down when his feet were swarmed by annoyed sounding chicks. “Aw chickies….no. Go find your mama or something, I don’t even like you!” 

Despite his words, the blonde bent down and scooped up armfuls of chicks, clucking and trilling at them as he carried them over to a makeshift pen. “Please stay there. I’m begging you. I’m literally begging you. Five minutes.” 

He shut the pen door with his foot and made an attempt at dusting chick feathers off his clothes and hair before shooting Bucky a grin. “Sorry about that. Chickens. What’r’ya gonna do?” 

“Um–” Bucky made a vague gesture, not quite sure what to think about the scene he’d just witnessed. “Well uh–” 

“Tasha phoned to say she was sending someone down to work with me.” the farmer continued with a friendly smile. “Took you so long to get here, thought for sure you’d gotten lost. Find the place okay?” 

“The directions I was given included the phrase ‘hollerin’ distance from the bridge’.” Bucky said flatly, regaining at least a little of his composure. “Not really sure how to interpret that.” 

“Oh, that means if you stood on the bridge and hollered?” he shook his head. “I couldn’t hear you at the house.”

“…alright.”

“So you’re looking for work, huh?” A quick sweep of blue eyes over Bucky’s frame, lingering over the gleam of his silver prostheses. “Can’t say I was expecting a Terminator to answer my help wanted add but you look beefy enough to toss hay bales and I suppose that’s all that matters. Welcome to Clintucky.” 

“Welcome to–” Bucky looked down at the outstretched hand and then back up at the guy. “Sorry, what? Welcome to where?” 

“Clintucky.” he said again, as if the word explained anything at all. “You know, like Kentucky, except my name’s Clint, not Ken, so it’s Clintucky.” 

“Clintucky.” 

“Oh right, right I’m bad at this, let me try again.” He cleared his throat and offered his hand again. “Name’s Clint and this is my farm. You lookin’ for work for the summer?” 

“Uh… yes?” Bucky reached out and shook Clint’s hand. “Yes I am.” 

“Great.” Clint looked so relieved it almost worried Bucky. “Cos I’ve got about a billion things needin’ done round here. I can’t pay you a whole lot but you can sleep in the house and use my truck and all that. We can switch off making meals if that’s your thing. Gotta be up with sunrise which is a bitch, but I make great coffee. You allergic to anything? Cats? Dogs? Milk?” 

“…no.” 

“Well then great! You can start in the morning!” Clint was practically beaming at him, and then– “Oh shit, I am bad at this. What did you say your name was?” 

“Bucky.” he said slowly, and Clint turned that megawatt grin up a couple notches in brightness. “Bucky Barnes.”

“Alright then Bucky Barnes. Welcome to Clintucky. Lookin’ forward to working with you.” 

Bucky couldn’t help his own begrudging smile, or the way his eyes lingered at the pull of faded flannel on Clint’s shoulders, the strain at the seam of his jeans as the farmer crouched back down to swoop up another runaway chick. 

“Lookin’ forward to working with you too.” 

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I remember seeing them perform this live on my campus.. My jaw dropped within 10 seconds.

What if Harry Potter, the chosen one, had turned out to be a squib, how do you think history would have turned out differently?

It was Mrs. Figg who suspected first.

She noticed many things, sitting on her side of her fence with her cats chasing butterflies and nuzzling her ankles, Mundungus and the other watchers dropping by for tea now and then.

Mrs. Figg noticed that Petunia was a nosy bit of work with insecurities hanging from her every harsh angle. She noticed when Dudley learned the word MINE– the whole neighborhood noticed that one. She noticed that Vernon glared at owls.

She noticed that when Petunia gave Harry a truly horrendous haircut one year, it grew back in at a normal rate. Harry was uneven and weird-looking for ages, hiding under beanies when he could.

When Mrs. Figg had Harry over for carefully miserable afternoons of babysitting, she noticed nothing moved that shouldn’t. He didn’t accidentally make flowers out of fallen leaves, or levitate anything during tantrums, or turn toys funny colors.

Mrs. Figg called up her mother, interrupting the wizarding bridge game she was winning against the nursing home staff, and asked her how she had known, decades back, that her youngest daughter was a squib.

When Albus Dumbledore received Mrs. Figg’s letter he wrote back a polite thank you and then went to talk with Minerva McGonagall, who inhaled sharply in horror when he told her the news.

Finally, McGonagall gave a gathered sigh. “I suppose we can ask one of the wizarding families to homeschool him,” she said. “We can’t have the Boy Who Lived not knowing about his own world.”  

“No, he’ll come to Hogwarts,” said Dumbledore.

“Hogwarts is not a place for–” Her voice fell. “–squibs, Albus.”

Dumbledore shook his head. “Harry must be taught.”

“Be taught what, Albus?”

But Dumbledore just sighed and offered her a lemon drop.

Years later, the owls and the letters came to 4 Privet Drive. The Dursleys ran, dragging Harry with them, and the letters and one stubborn gamekeeper followed– none of this would change with a magicless Harry.

When Hagrid asked Harry in that little cabin on that little rock in the middle of the sea if weird things always happened around him, Harry couldn’t tell him about vanishing glass and setting captive snakes free, about ending up somehow on the school roof, or growing his hair out overnight.  

“Strange things always happen around you, don’ they?”

“Um,” said Harry, racking his brain. “Well… I live in a cupboard under the stairs…”

Harry could tell him about how snakes sometimes talked back, because that had never been Harry’s magic, but when he did Hagrid just blanched and changed the subject.

Hagrid held out hope, even against Dumbledore’s quiet warning explanations, until they made it to Ollivander’s Wands. Harry marveled at Diagon Alley, got his hands shaken in the Leaky, pressed his nose up against shop windows. Hagrid watched the scant boy– looked at James’s messy hair, Lily’s eyes, Harry’s own wandering gaze– and he wondered how this boy could be anything but magical.

In the wand shop, Ollivander said, “James Potter, yes… mahogany, eleven inches. Pliable. A powerful wand for Transfiguration.” He said, “And your mother, Lily…  strong in Charms work, ten and… yes, ten and a quarter, willow, swishy.”

Harry picked up stick after wooden stick. They remained just that– wood with bits of feather or scale or hair. Harry wondered if the creatures who gave these offerings were still alive– if they were given or taken. What did it do to your wand when they died? He waved a maplewood wand (unicorn hair, eleven inches) and a gust from the door opening blew some receipts off the counter.

“Well, said Ollivander. “I think that’s as close as we’re likely to get.”

He sent them out with the maplewood. Hagrid bought Harry a snowy owl and a fudge sundae and tried not make it too obvious that these were condolence gifts. The next day the Prophet’s headlines read: The Boy Who Lived– A Squib? Various magical medical experts weighed in on how it might have happened. Fingers were pointed at childhood trauma, at his upbringing, at his family lineage.

Harry still met Ron on the train– Ron was still smudge-nosed and Harry still bought enough candy to share. When Molly had helped him through the platform entrance, her voice had been a little softer, a little more pitying– but it was still better than the laughter that had been in his aunt and uncle’s voices when they dropped him here to find a platform they didn’t think existed.

Hermione Granger dropped by their compartment, looking for Neville’s toad, but got distracted when she spotted Harry. “I’ve read about you! In my books, and in the paper,” she said. “You’re the Boy Who Lived, and you’re a squib.”

Harry sank down in his seat. Ron hid Scabbers under a candy wrapper.

“Squibs have never been allowed in Hogwarts,” Hermione announced. “According to Hogwarts, A History, squibs try to sneak in now and then– the furthest anyone’s ever gotten is to the Sorting Hat before they got found out.” At eleven, Hermione still believed in expulsion being worse than death. Her voice was thrumming with sympathetic horror.

“But they already found out about me,” Harry said, alarmed.

“It’s alright, mate,” said Ron. “You’re Harry Potter. Oy, Granger,” he added. “What’s this Hat? Fred and George were trying to sell me some story about having to fight a mountain troll to get your House…”

Harry sat back and watched the countryside rush by. Yes, he was Harry Potter– his aunt’s useless sister’s useless child, the boy in the lumpy hand-me-down sweaters who named the spiders who lived in his cupboard. And here, in new world, he was apparently useless too.

When they got to Hogwarts, Harry clenched his fists and stood in line with the other first years. He barely twitched at the ghosts or Peeves, just stared ahead and thought about how far he would get before they turned him around and sent him back to Vernon and Petunia.

They opened the Great Hall doors. They called the first years one by one. Harry clenched his teeth and walked up to the Hat when they called his name.

As he turned to sit down on the stool, he really caught sight of the Hall for the first time– the hovering candles, the big wooden tables, the black robes that swallowed the light. Translucent ghosts gossiped with the students beside them. The paintings on the far walls– were they moving?

Harry’s jaw had unclenched, falling open. His fists curled open, curving around the stool’s seat as he leaned forward to stare. If this was it, if this was as far as he’d get in this world, then he wanted to drink it all in. The candles were floating, in mid-air.

The Hat dropped down over his eyes and blocked out the light.

Well, said the dry voice that had been hollering House placements all night. What do we have here?

Ron had been begging for not-Slytherin. Draco from the robes shop had been scornful of Hufflepuff, desperate in his disdain. Neville had begged for Hufflepuff, sure he was not brave enough for Gryffindor.

Please, thought Harry. Don’t send me back.

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Shadowed Hearts/Winter Souls (Chapter Fifteen)

MASTERLIST

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It took James only fifteen minutes to ready Zima for the journey, laying a warmer blanket down before cinching the saddle, working the bit gently into the stallions mouth and crooning softly to the big animal wen Zima picked up on his anxiety and pranced a little in the stall. “Easy, lovely.” James whispered, patting at the soft nose. “Easy, we’ll ride fast tonight, let you out to run for a while, you’ll like that moya krasota, won’t you?” “You really are leaving.” Tony’s voice at the door made James tense, but he kept his voice neutral to reply, “I have a job to do, Tony. A war to win and I’ve been away too long. Of course I am really leaving.”  Tony didn’t answer, and James secured the bridle under Zima’s head and went to get his pack. “I assumed you would be locked away in your room to avoid Natalia’s meddling, or at the very least drinking in the kitchen with the others. I should be flattered my leaving have such an effect on the family. The last time I left, Natalia threw a vase at me and told me not to come back so I must be moving up in her estimation.” “She cracked a tea kettle against the wall when she came downstairs.” Tony said flatly and James snorted. “So no, I’d say her estimation of you hasn’t risen at all.” “And it shouldn’t.” James slung his pack over Zima’s back. “Maybe one day she’ll stop being angry when I disappoint her.” “Maybe.” Tony allowed. “But we always hold the people we love in high estimation. That’s what allows our hearts to break over and over every time a loved one lets us down.” “I think any leftover love Natalia had for me disappeared the last time I left.”  “If you think Talia doesn’t love you anymore, you’re being purposefully stubborn and purposefully foolish.” The words came sharper than Tony had intended but he made no attempt to soften them. “A man like you doesn’t survive in war for this long without knowing how to read people, and Natalia might have been a spy before but now she’s just a woman trying to keep the people she loves close and safe. If you can’t see that, you’re being stupid. Purposefully stupid.”  “Are we calling each other names now, Tony?” “Is me calling you stupid worse than you calling me nothing but a warm body?” “…no.” James ground his teeth together and hissed out a breath. “And I apologized for that.”

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Shadowed Hearts/Winter Souls (Chapter Seventeen)

MASTERLIST

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“Come home with me.” “What d’ya mean, come home with you.” James scoffed, blowing on his fingers to warm them enough to roll his cigarette. “Why would I do that?” “I dunno.” Stevie dropped onto the ground next to James and knocked their knees together. “Cos you should come ‘round and meet my Ma. S’just a few miles away and the Commander says us boys who live close enough to go home for Christmas can go. Want you to come with me.” “Don’t like moms.” James grunted and Steve knocked at him again. “Cut it out, Stevie. Gonna make me spill this.” “Give it here.” Stevie took the cigarette away from James and rolled it himself, quickly and efficiently. “And you do like moms, so quit lyin’ and come on.” “Stevie–” “Bucky.” Stevie glanced around to be sure they were alone, then leaned in and covered James’s mouth with his own for a long, lingering kiss. “C’mon baby. We can sleep on a real bed and be warm and dry and, you know–” a shy smile. “Almost two years we’ve been together and it’s about time my parents should meet the fella I’m gonna spend my life with, you know?” “Oh yeah?” The words came out a little hoarse, James’s annoyance of the nickname Bucky washed away by the love shining from those beautiful blue eyes. “You gonna spend your life with me, Stevie?” “So long as you don’t drag me back to Russia with you.” Steve inched closer and kissed James again. “You think you could stay around here with me? Learn to farm and all that? I’d let you chase me naked through th’corn fields and do all sortsa dirty things to me.”

James burst into startled laughter and Steve lunged forward with a kiss to shut him up. “Come home with me.” He breathed when they parted for air. “I love you, Buck, and I wanna spend this Christmas with you, with my fella. It’ll be the first of a hundred more we’ll have together.”

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I HAVE NO WORDS

(ALSO this seems to be the op, on youtube)

Not A Good Sign: This Kid Hasn’t Been Diagnosed With Anything Yet, But Chris Pratt Has Been Standing Outside Of His Room For 3 Days Straight

Until recently, 10-year-old Danny Franklin lived a normal life. He liked playing soccer, hanging out with his friends, and reading comic books. But then something happened that changed everything. He hasn’t been diagnosed with any sort of terminal disease yet, but Chris Pratt has been standing outside of his room for three days straight.

Well, that can’t be good. Read more

This is the /an/ post that keeps on giving.

Shadowed Hearts/Winter Souls (Chapter Nineteen)

MASTERLIST

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Wanda and Pietro made it back to the hotel room first, and per the instructions put in place before the ball, Natalia and Tony arrived almost half an hour later, sweeping up the stairs to their room with smiles and quiet laughter and looking for all the world as if they’d had the time of their life at the party. Or rather, Tony was smiling and trying to laugh. Natalia was practically shaking with rage, her face pale and eyes brittle and when Tony unlocked the door to their suite, he warned through gritted teeth– “Wait until we get through the living area and into the far bedroom before you start yelling, please. We’ve made it this far, do not ruin the evening by making a scene in the hallway.” Natalia’s lips thinned to an angry line and Tony set his jaw. “Natalia–” “It irritates me that you feel the need to coach my behavior.” she hissed and Tony retorted, “Then maybe you shouldn’t have spent the carriage ride screaming and cursing in about six different languages over the staggering incompetence of your brother and the men you love!”

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