gwyn | Anyone recognize this fic?

I am going crazy trying to find this fic I remember reading last year after CA:TWS when I was hoovering up fanfic like mad. So it's entirely possible I'm conflating the few details I remember from multiple fics, but when I've gone to the ones I might be conflating, they are not it.

It was from Bucky's POV (this is the one absolute detail I do remember), and the one thing that stuck in my mind was them having sex, or at least starting to have sex, in front of a window, because I'm pretty sure they were living in the Tower (though who knows). It was a little angsty I think, and no, there was no real kink involved. Bucky was frustrated or feeling angry or bleak, something like that, and I think he'd had some trouble sexually because of how messed up his mind was.

I cannot seem to find it in my AO3 history, and I went through some of the recs I was using from musesfool at the time, but I can't seem to find it. It was definitely on AO3, though. At the time I wasn't bookmarking things, and now I'm kicking myself. If push comes to shove I'll try the stucky library on tumblr, but I was hoping to avoid that just because I remember so little in the way of details.

It's definitely not Good Boy, because I don't read kink stuff, and it wasn't the one where Steve leaves Bucky post-its, though in some ways it reminded me of that one. It's also not the one where Bucky wants to have sex with Steve again, but he has trouble articulating that, or the really hot one where Steve and Bucky reignite their sexual relationship--though in some ways, those last couple ones remind me of the one I'm searching for (probably because they were from Bucky's POV).

Ugh, I can't figure out why I can't find this thing.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kore

Sadly, this does not sound familiar, but I only got into reading Stucky fic relatively recently compared to everyone else. It sounds really intriguing, though.

the really hot one where Steve and Bucky reignite their sexual relationship

omg what is this one? also stucky library on tumblr?

From:

gwyn

I found it--it took me like five fucking hours or more, but I found it--I'd conflated some other things into the story (which I was afraid of) but the window fucking is there, and the dark angsty Bucky POV. It's pro patria mori by hitlikehammers.

The hot one where Steve and Bucky reignite their sexual relationship is Through the Notches in Your Spine, which is really sweet, because Bucky is still kind of reticent and traumatized but he wants to go all the way, not just kiss and stuff, and Steve's achingly patient with him. It hits all my Steve loving Bucky back to health buttons. There's another one (these three were the ones I think I was conflating all together in my terrible memory) called (When Everything Breaks) You are the Anchor That Holds Me. I read them all at a time, I think--last June-July, and so many other stories that I jumbled them all together.

The Stucky Library is a tumblr for fic finding and recs of themes. I have kind of mixed weird feelings about them but it's probably not worth discussing here lest I look like an asshole. A lot of my acquaintances rely on them religiously.

From:

kore

I'd conflated some other things into the story (which I was afraid of) but the window fucking is there, and the dark angsty Bucky POV. It's pro patria mori by hitlikehammers.

YOU = BRILL this is just what I need right now

The hot one where Steve and Bucky reignite their sexual relationship is Through the Notches in Your Spine

I love that one! DAMN it is HOT. caughtinanocean is such a good writer, too, although their Bucky is a tiny bit more broken than I go for, but caretaking loving Steve bringing Bucky back to health and love, UNFH.

...aww, I don't think you could be an asshole if you tried. I am so Old Skool that searching on AO3 kinda baffles me -- I don't like sorting by hits/kudos/comments, that always brings up the same most-read stuff, but I keep forgetting the long numerical search strings to filter stuff out, SIGH. I mostly rely on recs/bookmarks from people like you and musesfool and ranalore, which have been terrific!

From:

grammarwoman

I'm sorry the search took so much effort, but I am selfishly glad to benefit from the results. :D Moar fics for me!

From:

gwyn

Have you also read the one with the post-it notes that Steve leaves for Bucky? That was one of my favorites that I read around that time too. Now I'm gonna re-read all these and bookmark them.

Yeah, that thing I have with the library is kind of like that hits/kudos thing, basically I just…someone pointed out to me (they were excited for me, which was sweet) when a couple stories of mine were linked there. It took me a while to check it out, but I sort of felt like something the dog chewed on when I did, or something, because they've linked to a story or two but they don't include my page or name in their big list of authors and none of the stories mentioned are listed on the masterlist. It feels like being told you can't sit with the cool kids or something in the cafeteria, and kind of depressed me. So I know that makes me an asshole, but it definitely stung. It's nice if they rec a story, but…it's not a place I feel like I can hang out in and that's kinda why I wanted to avoid utilizing it for this fic search.

Sometimes I think things used to be easier in the days of personal websites and stuff. Fandom specific archives, maybe, or just email lists. Because as hard as it was to find fic, at least as a writer you didn't have this constant sense of your failure to be worthwhile or whatever shoved in your face all the time. You could just post stories and that was that. I'm trying to get better about this, but…as a kid who grew up being told her entire worth was based on achievements, I find myself feeling like it's toxic, like it's a referendum on my stuff/myself. I was really knocked for a loop when someone first told me that people sort by hit ratios to kudos or comments, and I've tried to get past that, but someone I know recently was saying that "ten percent is a good ratio" and I was like…well, that's it for me then. She's a pretty big name, so she has no fucking clue.

ANYWAY. Enough about my emotional issues. I'd rather talk about Bucky's. What I liked about the story was the repetion of "it's the worst" and then it gradually gets better, Bucky starts to gradually see that not only can it be okay, but that Steve is also messed up and he can be there for Steve, he can find healing in helping Steve, too. I love his frustration and determination, his doubts but also his certainty that Steve wants him.

From:

gwyn

Yeah, all of them are worth reading, including the one with the post-it notes Steve leaves for Bucky, which is called…I always have to go look this up, you'd think that the fact that the story repeats the word all the time would make me remember, and yet I don't Progress (The One with the Post-It Notes).

From:

montanaharper

Glad you found it. Where do you bookmark? Do you do it publicly? (I get most of my fic recs by following various people's AO3 bookmarks, because it's far easier to follow someone whose taste I trust than to wade through everything myself.)

From:

gwyn

You know, I'm a newb when it comes to bookmarking. I never liked those sites like delicious or whatever, they always seemed useless to me because I came up on recs, where people actually told you why they were mentioning something, and it was useful. I didn't even realize bookmarks were a thing on AO3 even after I'd moved all my stuff there; and even when I found out, I didn't realize people often didn't leave comments on the story but would comment in the bookmarks. Which, whatever, but that was weird to me.

And too, I read hardly any fic at all for so long--it wasn't till Pacific Rim that I started reading beyond Yuletide, and I could easily look things up by my history since I stayed logged in. But now my history has grown so much and apparently I wasn't logged in when I read this story, so…I started bookmarking last Yuletide when I was reading Kings fic to try to get in the headspace to write my own. I don't have a lot of bookmarks, because I don't bookmark a lot of stuff where I know, or know the name of, the author, since I can easily find their stuff. I tend to bookmark the stuff that I really liked where I know I won't remember which one it was if I went back through my history (oh god, last year I tried to make a recs list for M'lyn and I just…every story and story description in my history sounded the same!) or because it's one I know I will want to go back to on a bad day (again, really odd for me, since I never used to reread) or something like that.

But I guess a couple people who liked my fic were using my bookmarks, so I'm trying to be a bit more judicious about it, and bookmark things I enjoyed enough to pass on to other people. I try to write notes, too, if I can think of things to say. At some point I'll run out of new recs from musesfool's recs list since she's hardly had any Avengers related ones lately, but then I might try to look through my friend raveninthewind's bookmarks. Few people have similar tastes to me, though, so that's often really a problem for me. And reading unvetted fic…not a good thing for me. I was desperate in Pacific Rim, but there's WAY too much Steve/Bucky out there to look at on my own.

From:

montanaharper

I'll be keeping an eye on your AO3 bookmarks, then. At the moment I'm just keeping track of things for future reading, but I suspect when the next movie comes out I'll be going through my to-read list pretty quickly. *g*

From:

gwyn

When you feel like reading the stories, email me, okay? I can tell you who the authors I check out regularly even though I haven't bookmarked the stories, and can probably give you some pointers elsewhere, too. (There is definitely a tumblr cook kids culture/popularity contest at play in a lot of the most popular stuff, and a lot of times I'd say that this is a huge enough fandom that you can skip some of the stuff most people fawn over and still have plenty to read.)