Avengers Fic Rec: Scents and Sensibility: The Working Assassin’s Guide to Supersoldier Seduction by galwednesday, silentwalrus, skellerbvvt

TItle: Scents and Sensibility: The Working Assassin’s Guide to Supersoldier Seduction

Author:  galwednesday, silentwalrus, skellerbvvt

Ship: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes (implied past Steve Rogers/Howling Commandos/Peggy Carter …it makes more sense when you start readin the fic)

Wordcount: 93,217

URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14772824

Summary:  Captain America wakes up from the ice in 2013. The Winter Soldier wakes up in 2009, or rather defects from HYDRA, for a value of defect that’s closer to decimate. He ends up working for SHIELD. In April 2014, he’s assigned to Captain America’s mission as a sniper.

Steve’s just trying to get some kind of life together. Bucky is too, or at least he was until tall, blond and Captain shows up and starts just – being there, all the time. It’s terrible. It’s the worst. He has to do something about it.

Why this fic is awesome:

The summary would draw me in anyway but the thing with this one is that there is so much worldbuilding. Possibly also known as ‘That fic with the reef and the clownfish thing’.

Okay. Right. So this fic takes elements of the A/B/O fics and does something totally different with them.

If you aren’t a fan of A/B/O fics, this fic might be the one you do read. If you are a fan then hey! Look at this one! It does something new!

I am not the audience for A/B/O fics- it is not just not my kink but something that actively nudges all my no buttons (I realise this is my problem, not the fics, I have thoughts about why this affects me so much but this is not the place). BUT BUT BUT.

THIS FIC.

Okay so in this world people live in pods, all people can be ‘A’ or ‘O’ and can (like clownfish) switch to another if they wish to. The whole social conventions that people have are therefore fundamentally different, people live in social groups, have scent glands in different places, social grooming is big thing- which is so clever because the authors tie things in to this world in so many ways (Victory Rolls, Hair the musical as cultural references still work so well etc).

On top of that we have an erratic, but Doing His Thing Bucky (who never met Steve Rogers before modern day) learning to Human, while Steve is grieving for everyone he has lost (his pod!). Lots of Steve puttering around his apartment being lonely and lost in a new century, while Bucky hides out in Location Redacted and creates his own ideas of how to People with a pod made out of salvaged printers and shredders and NO IDEA how to handle it when he suddenly wants to climb Rogers like a tree.

Beautiful dorks, amazing worldbuilding, lots of mutual grooming, all the cuddles. It’s definitely one to help you survive February on.

 

Avengers Recs: Ain’t No Grave (Can Keep my Body Down) by spitandvinegarby

Title: Ain’t no grave (can keep my body down)

Author: spitandvinegar

Ship: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes

Wordcount: 107093

Summary: It’s six in the morning, and Steve is heading out on a run when he nearly trips over a bouquet of sunflowers on the front steps of his brownstone.

For a second paranoia takes over, and he kicks the flowers a little, waiting for them to explode. They don’t. They also came with a card, which he picks up. The front of the card has a tasteful picture of the Brooklyn bridge at sunset. It’s very nice and sedate, like the kind of card you would buy to give to your boss. On the inside someone has written a short message in big, shaky block letters.

I AM SORRY FOR SHOOTING YOU.

Steve sits down hard on the steps.

 

Why this fic is awesome: Oh my dear heaven well it is currently sweeping the Bookmarks of AO3 by storm. I have been following this one for some while just waiting for it to be finished so I can rec it. We have a Bucky who is brain damaged (post CA:TWS) and addicted to hardcore drugs still wandering around feeling like half a person, but wanting to make amends with Steve in his own way (hence the flowers) and at the same time chasing down evil doers as John the Revelator and somehow finding time to take two homeless teenagers under his wing and put all his old mother-henning protective instincts to good use, despite the blackouts and tics and drugs.

 

It is a heartbreaking roller-coaster of a read but also a marvelous one.