bakerstreet | I want this for Christmas.

I want this for Christmas.

The Lap Pillow Meme

From TV Tropes: A good way to show the physical intimacy and trust which a couple have is to rest one's head on the other's lap. Usually, the man does the resting while the woman provides the lap, not only because of anatomical reasons but because the lap-owner is typically of a nurturing nature more associated with femininity. Bonus points if she's feeding him grapes or stroking his hair. In some cases this is done between people who are not necessarily lovers, to comfort someone who is weeping or injured.

Or, in the case of the meme: screw the rules, we'll do anything. Maybe they're tired and just found a good place to rest? Maybe both parties were asleep? Hard to tell. All we know is, someone's head is going to be on another person's lap. Shenanigans will ensue.

How this works:
→ Leave a comment with the usual information in the subject line: character name, fandom. Any preferences, including what you don't want, should be included as well.
→ Congratulations,whoever tags your character has their head on your character's lap!
→ Tag around. Please please tag around.
→ Have fun, and be excellent to each other!

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Steve made a small sound of annoyance before he tipped his head back and looked up at Bucky. "Be honest. The perspective's off, isn't it?"

The two of them just barely fit on the twin motel bed. The second one had their suitcases on it. Eventually it might get cleared off and they'd sleep in separate beds but after a long day on the road driving away from New York it was easier to leave the bags packed and collapse onto the other bed together.

Steve had made himself comfortable with his head on Bucky's thigh, legs drawn up to support his sketchbook as he drew a picture of the skyline as they were leaving. He had the picture on his phone to reference because if he drew New York from memory it was always the 30's. But it wasn't working out the way he wanted. Something seemed wrong. He probably could fix it if he didn't draw it while lying down but he was comfortable.

And Bucky wasn't complaining about it either.

Bucky smirks a little at the sound he makes, and the edges of it soften into more of a smile when he looks up at him like that. “I don’t know, Steve…” he mumbles through a soft huff of amusement. “art’s your thing, not mine.”

He takes the pause as an opportunity to thread his fingers through Steve’s hair. This is nice. Feels familiar in a way that’s comforting like an old t-shirt. “Think maybe it’s cuz you’re laying down?” he points out in a gentle tease. “Not that I want you to move, but…”

"Yeah, but you've got eyes. You could tell if something was off." Steve offers him the sketchbook, which is already half-full of drawings. "Come on, does it look funny to you?"

He trusts Bucky's opinion on his drawings. If there's something wrong with it Bucky will tell him. He's always been honest about Steve's art. He's seen it since Steve was trying to draw like the original Disney cartoons before he found his own style.

It's a good thing Bucky says he doesn't want Steve to move because he thought about getting up. "I'm too comfortable."

They used to sit like this back in the day as well. Only they were usually on the floor of someone's room and Steve had scraps of paper and cheap pencils.

“Yeah,” he agrees with a huff and a slight nod. “I do have eyes,” pretty sharp ones, at that, he is a sniper, after all.

He hasn’t seen Steve do a lot of drawing lately— who has the time between world-ending crises, right? It’s nice to see him taking the time for it. That’s the kind of thing Bucky wants out of this trip for both of them. To have the chance to just slow down and take a breather.

He takes the sketchbook and studies the skyline, as different as it is the same somehow. “Right here…” he points out a spot near the far right corner where the furthest point of the skyline is just off-kilter enough he knows it’s driving Steve crazy. “I think it’s where the book is slanting a little against your knee, so it kind of makes it—“ he uses his free hand to make something of an upward slope.

"And they're good eyes." Steve takes the sketchbook back but only to set it down so that he could adjust how he's sitting against Bucky would removing his head from his lap. It would be easier to fix if he sat up but that isn't going to happen. They're both comfortable like this.

He does find a way to rest the sketchbook against his thighs while still keeping his head in Bucky's lap and it will allow him to fix the perspective error. It's so easy to see now that he's had it pointed out to him. It would be embarrassing if anyone else had pointed it out to him.

"What do you want to do about dinner?" he asks as he carefully starts readjusting lines. "There's that diner nearby. And I think I saw a pizza place. All those chain restaurants, of course."

He smirks slightly and waits until Steve is settled again to lean down and murmur in his ear, “You mean literally, like my vision, or is that your way of saying my eyes are pretty?”

“Diners like that usually have great food,” because they looked like they were stuck in a different time, and usually they were small, family-run places.

"You do have pretty eyes," Steve says, not the least bit flustered if that's what Bucky was going for. "They're a slate blue. Blue-gray. It's a nice color."

He smiled a little, amused at the idea that Bucky might be trying to fluster him. Yes, he could get weird about compliments but it's always easier to give someone else compliments.

"Your visions always be great." It's why Steve put him as the sniper of the Commandos. He was damn good at it.

"Okay, just let me know when you're hungry and we'll go. I can put this away whenever." He was sketching mostly because he likes to keep his hands busy.

Well, that's okay, because Bucky is nonplussed enough by the comment that he lets out a soft huff, "My Ma always said they looked like the sky before a storm." he isn't sure if that's right, but it always stuck with him for some reason.

"Yeah, I know," he mutters softly, watching as Steve fusses with the piece in the corner he'd pointed out.

He hums a quiet, noncommittal noise, reaching with his right hand to card his fingers slowly through Steve's hair. "Yeah, but I'm comfy right now," moving sounds like the worst plan right now.

"Your Ma had a good eye for color too." Steve could agree with Mrs. Barnes words. A summer storm, blue sky with just a hint of grey coming in. He had really nice eyes. The ladies had loved them back in the day.

He smiles a little as Bucky plays with his hair. It's really nice. Steve hasn't let anyone but Natasha get this close since he came out of the ice. He was used to punches and fights. Soft, gentle touches like this were a nice change of pace.

"Yeah, I like this too." It was always nice being just Steve Rogers. Even better being Steve Rogers with Bucky Barnes. "But I'll hear your stomach rumbling before you will."

Bucky finds that he craves exactly this sort of thing a lot lately, and it doesn't matter if he's on the giving or receiving end of it, he just likes the feeling of these slow, quiet moments.

He laughs a little at that. "Yeah... but do you really wanna move right now?" Please say no, Steve. Food can wait a little while, right?

"Not really."

They hadn't done much today. Mostly drive away from the city and take some backgrounds on their way to the first stop of their roadtrip. There had been some conversations but a lot of quiet moments on the road listening to music.

It shouldn't have been tiring. It wasn't really. Steve's just really comfortable and it's nice to do nothing for awhile.

"I don't want to move until I fix this anyway," he says, tapping his pencil against the sketchbook. "It's going to bug me if I stop now."

The drive has been nice so far, if mostly uneventful. Bucky doesn’t need a constant stream of chatter, he’s perfectly content in the stretches of amiable silence between them. There’s nothing thick or heavy in the air during them like the ones when he’s alone in his apartment, and that’s refreshing.

“Good,” he admits with a soft mumble. “Take as long as you need to,” he assured him. No need to rush, he’s in no hurry. “Do you want to just have something delivered to our room?” Because that’s an option too. DoorDash is still one of Bucky’s favorite things in the future.

Steve has mixed feelings on getting delivery. It's convenient sure, but he knows how easy it is to just stay inside all the time that way. And how bad that was for him back when he first got out of the ice. He doesn't want Bucky to hide from the world.

"I don't think those little diners deliver," he says, looking for a middle ground sort of answer. He doesn't like making Bucky do things when he doesn't want to. He always wants him to have that choice and be free. "We might be able to get carry out if we walk over."

That would be a good compromise. Bucky gets out and talks to people for a little while and then they go back to the relative safety of the hotel room.

“True,” he relents and keeps dragging his fingers through Steve’s hair, blunt nails scraping lightly over his scalp, trailing the same, steady path down to his neck and back up.

He hums agreeably and nods even though Steve can’t see him. “No, you’re right, we should go. Proper. Sit in a booth and everything,” he’s still a little on edge in public, surrounded by people. But the only way to get better is to keep trying. He can’t re-acclimate if he hides all the time. It’s just so much easier to isolate himself.

It's hard to concentrate on drawing when Bucky's doing that. His shoulders relax bit by bit, tension just melting away. Steve wants to put the sketchbook down, turn onto his side, and hide his face against Bucky's stomach. He resist the urge.

"I hope they have a tuna melt," Steve says focusing on his drawing even more. He's not going to get distracted and get clingy just because Bucky's is touching him so gently. "And thick cut fries. I really want some thick cut fries."

All of that sounds really nice but he's still too comfortable to move. When his hunger was too much then he'd move, but not a moment sooner.

He can feel the tension ease out of Steve’s shoulders and a soft smile touches his lips. That was the idea, so it’s good to see it working.

Bucky is relaxed here with Steve pressed against him, no pressure to be anything or anyone he isn’t. Criminal, victim, hero— none of that matters here, here he gets to just be Bucky.
James.
Sometimes, he thinks he still feels like the person that James used to be.

“We’ll never be the same, will we?” he mumbles softly into the silence that has enveloped them while Steve was working on his drawing. “Everything is too… different now.”

It's a heavy question. One that makes Steve put his sketchbook aside so that he can give Bucky his full attention.

"We wouldn't have been the same after the war," he offers, reaching for Bucky's hand to hold it gently. "Even if you didn't fall and I didn't crash, we wouldn't have been the same."

They could never ben those young men in Brooklyn ever again. They lost that the second they went to war. "The best we get now is to figure out who we want to be in this day and age. We've got a lot of choices."

He put Bucky's hand on his chest over his heart. "And we've got each other."

When Steve takes his hand, Bucky feels something gently bloom in his chest. “I know…” he’s right, of course he’s right, they were coming back home changed, no matter what happened.

When Steve puts Bucky’s hand over his heart, it bursts, bright and warm. His heart is in his throat when he breathes out a soft, “Yeah… we always have that,” his fingers twist slightly into the material of Steve’s shirt. Why do some emotions hit him so much harder than others?

The much death and a good portion of it senseless and stupid, left scars no matter what. Steve still dreams of the war sometimes. It haunts him, not that he really lets people know. He keeps going forward because he can't go back.

"And I know I say it a lot, but you decide who you want to be now," Steve says, looking up at Bucky with a hopeful, earnest expression. "And I'm here to help you find that. Even if you end up being a guy who roots for the Yankees."

He hopes that will break the tension a little. He knows Bucky doesn't like to talk about himself these days. Steve doesn't care who he is, though, because he's still Bucky.

Sometimes, Bucky works himself into a paranoid trail of thoughts that threatens to strangle him— it’s the worst at night when he’s trying to sleep. Those moments are the hardest, and he hopes he can skip that tradition tonight.

“I know…” his voice is quiet and a little hoarse, “but that’s terrifying to me right now. I don’t know where to start.” He had this chance, a second- third?- chance at life, and this time he had complete control of it. Bucky still isn’t sure what to do with that many options in front of him.

It’s the right move: Something breaks loose and he scoffs softly, shaking his head. “You don’t have to worry about that, at least.”

"You'll figure that out." He rubs his hand over Bucky's to help soothe him. He knew how hard it was to find your place in the modern world. Steve woke up some nights thinking it was still 1930. He still didn't really know his purpose besides being Captain America. "One day at a time. Or I can give you my lists. People had a lot of ideas on what I needed to see or learn about."

In the end it came down to adapting or going insane. Steve wasn't going to let that happen to Bucky. He'd help him through it no matter what.

"Thank God. Sam might have to be my best friend if you became a Yankees fan." He can keep teasing about that. Yankees fans are a sin against God. "Oh! Do you want to see a Dodgers game when we get to California? I know it won't be the same but we could go."

"You're so sure... I wish I was," he twists his hand to tangle his fingers with Steve's and squeezes. Tight.

He smirks a little, "There are lists?" somehow, he isn't surprised by this news at all.

"Please, you can't replace me," he snaps back teasingly, and for just a second or two, the rakish grin of years ago flashes through his face.

"I believe in you. I can be sure enough for the both of us." Steve didn't know if that would be enough in the end. Bucky has so much work to do but he has faith. It would be cruel to get Bucky back only to lose him again.

He did have his notebook in his bag which was on the other bed. Getting it meant getting up and Steve didn't want to do that. He really couldn't with Bucky holding his hand either. "Yeah, people kept recommending things to be so I kept lists. I'll show you one at dinner."

No, there's no replacing Bucky. Even though he's gotten close to a few people none of them fill that place in Steve's heart. "Maybe. Maybe not. I'd have to try first."

"That makes one of us," he says with a huff. He's determined to figure it out. Hopefully, this trip helps as much as he thinks it might.

He smiles softly and nods, "Yeah, I'd like to see it," he is curious but mostly, he just wants to lay here forever. It can wait until later.

"Nope," he says lightly, tilting his head back further into the mound of pillows behind him. "You're stuck with me, Rogers."

Fuck it.

Steve rolls onto his side, slides his arm around Bucky and presses his face against his stomach. He just can't stand how hopeless Bucky seems about his future. He has one and yes, that's a lot but it can be a good thing. Steve just doesn't know how to make him see it.

"There's a lot of great things about the future. You'll see. And the future is a better place with you in it," he says, though his voice is muffled by how he's hugging Bucky. "I know it's hard for you and I really wish I could make you have some hope about it. And your place in it."

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