comment_fic | Friday: Masterpiece Theater

Hi! I’m

brumeier, and this week we’ve been filling TV-related themes. Thank you to everyone who participated with prompts and fills this week, we had an amazing turnout! Our final theme of the week is Masterpiece Theater. This is the land of the historical drama, so your prompts should be historical in nature. Anything from the Big Bang up through the 1990s (or maybe early 2000s?) would qualify.

Just a few rules:
No more than five prompts in a row.
No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
Use the character's full names and fandom's full name for ease adding to the Lonely Prompts spreadsheet.
No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here.
If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the spoiler cut.
If there are possible triggers in your story, please warn for them in the subject line!

Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt

Some examples to get the ball rolling...
+ Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steve Rogers (+/ any), time traveling to find Bucky

+ Hawaii Five-0, Steve McGarrett/Danny Williams, detectives in the 1950s

+ Supernatural, Sam Winchester + Dean Winchester, popular monster hunting team in 1940s creature features (please no Wincest)

+ Stargate Atlantis/Any, Evan Lorne +/ Any, meeting on the commune in the 1960s

We use AO3 to bookmark filled prompts. If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3 please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2016 collection. See further notes on this new option here.

Not feeling any of today’s prompts? Check out Lonely Prompts Spreadsheet 1 (not very current), Lonely Prompts Spreadsheet 2, or the Calendar Archives, or for more recent prompts, you can use LJ's advanced search options to find prompts to request and/or fill.

While the Lonely Prompts Spreadsheets and LJ's advanced search options are available, bookmarking the links of prompts you like might work better for searching for in the future.

tag=masterpiece theater

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They had a half hour or so to kill before dinner would be ready, so Evan took Steve back to his studio to show him the new piece he was working on. Steve, whose own apartment was little more than a glorified closet, promised himself he’d have a space like that someday – light coming in from a bank of window, which offered a view of the Seine, and room enough to stretch canvases and mix paints.

Evan’s latest canvas was still mostly sketchwork, with some color coming in along one edge as he tried out different shades. Steve knew Evan’s favorite subject was the Seine, but this one was Parc Monceau at the height of summer, full of people.

“David says my landscapes are excellent, but also a little sterile because I never paint any people into them. So I’m practicing. I’m better at drawing them than painting them.”

“That explains all this,” Steve said, gesturing at the wall opposite the windows, which was covered in sketches of faces. Men, women, and children. Young and old. Beautiful and…and…

Steve forgot how to breathe.

He pulled one of the sketches off the wall, and when his knees buckled, Evan was there to steady him.

“Steve? What is it?” Evan asked, alarmed. He led Steve over to the faded, bedraggled couch in the corner.

“How did you draw this?” Steve asked, his voice sounding like a rusty hinge to his own ears. “Did you know him?”

Evan looked confused. “No. I’ve just been making quick sketches of people in between portraits. He was just someone I saw on the promenade. Why?”

Someone Evan saw on the promenade. Just another face in the crowd, no different from any of the others pinned to the wall.

Till the end of the line, Stevie.

“It’s Bucky,” Steve whispered, the lump in his throat making it almost impossible to swallow.

“What?” Evan gently tugged the sketch out of Steve’s hand. “Your best friend? But…Didn’t he die at Argonne?”

“I saw him go down.”

But there’d been no body to send home to his family. The fighting had been brutal that morning. The air had been thick with fog, and smoke from the guns and mortars, and the Germans had kept cutting them down even as they advanced. Steve used to wish he’d caught a round that day, because watching Bucky go down and know there was nothing he could do, knowing there was no time to stop and help the wounded, or retrieve the dead, had been unbearable.

The best part of Steve had died that day.

“We’ll figure it out,” Evan promised. “There has to be a logical explanation.”

If Bucky was back from the dead, Steve didn’t think logic entered into it. Not at all.

*o*o*o*

Steve haunted the promenade for two weeks, searching in vain for the face he knew better than his own. He sent telegrams to Bucky’s family, discretely trying to find out if they’d heard from him. They hadn’t. Evan made duplicates of his sketch, and kept one pinned to his easel while he was working, asking everyone who sat for him if they knew Bucky.

The man was a ghost. Maybe literally. Or maybe Bucky had a doppelgänger that had passed through Paris and now was in London or Barcelona.

Not knowing was driving him mad.

When news finally came, it was delivered by Evan’s friend Rodney, an often-cranky man who loved science the way Steve loved art. He turned up at Steve’s door well after midnight, pounding loudly and not caring about any of the other residents who might be disturbed by the noise.

Steve put on his robe and yanked the door open, blinking at the light coming from the sconces in the hall.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. And the only reason I came all the way over here was to let you know that your man is with John back at our place. I assumed you’d want to know.”

Steve grabbed hold of the door frame with one hand. “Bucky’s with John? Are you…Are you sure it’s him?”

Rodney gave him a baleful look. “Would I be here otherwise? Get dressed.”

Steve had no memory of putting on his clothes, no memory of the three-block trip to get to Rodney and John’s rooms above the Atlantis Café. When he saw Bucky sitting on Rodney’s couch, thin and solemn but most definitely Bucky Barnes, Steve was pretty sure he forgot his own name.

He dropped to his knees before Bucky, like a supplicant, and his hands hovered between them, afraid to touch. Afraid it wouldn’t be welcome.

“Buck?”

“I remember you,” Bucky said hesitantly. “I know you.”

“I thought you were dead,” Steve whispered.

He’d left Bucky in Argonne. How could he have done that? He should’ve gone back. Should’ve made sure.

“I think I was.”

“The Germans had him,” John said quietly. Steve had forgotten he was in the room, perched on the arm of the couch. “Prisoner of war. He escaped right before Armistice. I don’t know for sure where he’s been since, but I suspect he’s been living rough.”

Steve didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t need to know how John had found Bucky, or how Bucky had stumbled across John, or where he’d been these last few years, or why he hadn’t tried to get back home.

All that mattered was Bucky was alive. Nothing in Steve’s life had been simple since the war, during or after, but how he felt about Bucky, that was the simplest thing in the world. He’d loved him since they were boys together. He’d love Bucky forever.

“Welcome back, Bucky,” Steve said.

He tentatively put his hands on Bucky’s knees, breathless from the solid feel of him. Real. Not a ghost.

“Sorry it took so long,” Bucky said.

When he started to cry, Steve gathered him up and cried with him.

I'm not crying you're crying. This is beautiful. Such a wonderful addition to the 'verse. Love Steve joining in the little Stargate family, and then the twist of Steve spotting Bucky in Evan's art was just masterful.

And then Rodney and John rescuing Bucky was just perfect. Thank you so much!

::beams:: Thank you! This could easily have been twice the size, honestly, but I had to cut it short before it ate my life.

Friday: Masterpiece Theater

Fill 2/3: Gay Paree 'verse with bonus Evan/David and John/Rodney

Fill 3/3: Gay Paree 'verse with bonus Evan/David and John/Rodney

Re: Fill 3/3: Gay Paree 'verse with bonus Evan/David and John/Rodney

Re: Fill 3/3: Gay Paree 'verse with bonus Evan/David and John/Rodney