i'm building a body where our design has failed

Day Two: Headlights (from thebonesofferalletters)
(Prompt list; I'm 7 shy of the full month.)

and if you come to find me, I'll color you red
MCU AU, Pepper Potts & Bucky Barnes, 727 words
Content warnings: Red Room issues (nothing explicit, but very much there)

... Uh. This one might take some explaining. So there's a story I've been wanting to write, which is... backtracked into a canon AU from a totally modern AU. Basically it started with the modern AU where Pepper, Natasha, and Bucky are adopted siblings, and then it turned into the AU where Pepper is a Black Widow and escaped the Red Room with Bucky's help. It's... a very intricate AU and I have a lot of backstory and scenes planned for it and I love it even if Bast is probably the only other person who will ever give a damn about it. This is maybe the first scene, definitely a scene, that I had in mind for it; if I ever get around to writing it probably it may or may not be in the fic at all, let alone in this form exactly, but... dammit, I did the thing. Considering how long I've wanted to get any of this out, I'll take it.

( Take if you can, give if you must, ain't nobody but yourself to trust. )

When you see this, share 3 random lines from 3 WIPs

1. He waits until James is in the other room, curled up in what's become his spot on the couch while Clint cooks -- it's only the second day he's been willing to go sit in another room while Clint is up and doing something; that probably means something, but hell if he knows what. no idea. dont want 2 ask him. kinda skttsh. dont wanna scare him away. He sends the message, then adds, hows the search? find tall dark and deadly yet?, because Natasha will keep from giving away any details out of habit if he doesn't directly ask.

2. "David," she says instead. It's gentle, but that does nothing to stop his heart from dropping. "If you could promise I'd be a real part of this relationship, if you could tell me we'd be like any other couple waiting for their fourth, I'd say yes in a heartbeat. But you can't, can you? You've been two and waiting for too long. And I love you both, but I won't do that to myself."

3."I didn’t think ‘unorthodox’ meant ‘stupid’," he shoots at Fury, arms folded over his chest. "What part of an active Prince and a possibly-Active Sleeping Beauty in the field together sounds like a good idea to you? Do you want an Evil Fairy showing up?" Because I don’t want to go back under, Steve cuts himself off from saying. I don’t want to lose another seventy years. Who knows if I’ll survive it this time?