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When Bucky goes viral, he doesn’t even know what YouTube is.
It’s all Sam’s fault.
Bucky didn’t want to be a youtuber. What he wanted to do was find a nonviolent outlet for when he wasn’t on missions. And it turns out that Craft stores in the modern day were literal treasure troves, and Bucky has not an ounce of impulse control. Sam doesn’t have much choice in the matter when Bucky forces him to give him rides to craft stores every other day.
Bucky could seriously spend days in a Micheal’s if Sam let him, just strolling down the aisles, taking classes, looking at all the seemingly impossible colors. So he starts crafting. He teaches himself how to sew, invests in a hot glue gun, buys some clay and some soap-making supplies, even finds a pretty-good-shape sewing machine at an estate sale for a good price. He finds his outlet, and he sets up his craft station in the living room of the small apartment that he shares with Sam, and that’s the first step on his way to unintentional YouTube virality.
“Do you really have to do this in here?” Sam asks one day, tired after a long day of training with Steve and Nat at the compound. He has to tiptoe over numerous extension cords so as to not knock over any hot glue guns just to reach the couch. Finding the tv remote is a whole other story. He has to move a haphazard pile of discount fabrics off the couch before he can sit.
Bucky looks up from his current project. He had recently taught himself how to crochet and decided to make mini hats for Stark’s robots (they always look so cold). He glares at Sam over the reading glasses he occasionally uses while crafting and frowns, “You want me to stop crafting? You want me to go crazy with idleness and revert back to my HYDRA brainwashed self? You want that for me?”
Sam rolls his eyes, arm deep in the couch as he fishes around for the tv remote, “You know that’s not what I meant. Stop being dramatic.”
“Stop hating on my crafting then.”
Sam victoriously pulls the remote out of the couch, “Whatever, Buck. Wanna watch Dance Moms?”
Bucky huffs, using a single finger to push his glasses farther up his nose then swiftly makes another purl stitch, “I can see just fine from here, thank you.”
Sam props his feet up on the coffee table, toes nudging aside a stack of felt, “Suit yourself.”
Bucky’s craft station only continues to clutter their living room.
The Youtuber thing though. Bucky doesn’t have a clue. He likes crafting. Goes viral. Yadda yadda yadda. The crafting thing isn’t the whole story. That doesn’t explain it completely. You see it happens, really, because Bucky isn’t the only one who has a hobby.
Sam likes to make videos. Stupid smart phone, edited-in-iMovie, and never-shown-to-the-world videos. But videos nonetheless. It’s like a diary for him, an outlet maybe, in its own right. He can be creative if he wants (he and Steve make an epic Western movie during a free day at the compound, and Sam genuinely considers submitting the thing to festivals, it’s that good), or make home-video-style movies of the avengers all huddled in Sam and Bucky’s tiny kitchen, yelling over each other as they burn Christmas cookies.
Bucky crafts, and Sam makes videos, and that’s where the trouble begins.
“You’re just gonna sit there and watch me?” Bucky demands, needle and thread poised carefully in his big hands as he peers over those tiny spectacles of his to glare at Sam once again.
Bucky has no idea he’s being filmed. Sam adjusts the camera angle minutely, “Uh, Yeah. Quality time and all that. Just pretend I’m not here.”
Even with Bucky’s attention hot glued to his line of thread on felt, his eye roll is practically palpable. “Weirdo.”
“Says the grown man making a plush giraffe for another grown man.”
“It’s for Stevie!” Bucky rebutes, voice high and defensive as he glares at his half-born plushie, “You know he loves giraffes.”
“Yeah,” Sam sighs, sounding just on the edge of disappointed, an unspoken memory audibly passing through his thoughts, “He really loves giraffes.”
And so when Sam takes the footage and edits it down, he finds himself smiling. It’s basically twenty straight minutes of the two of them bickering goodnaturedly followed by a montage of Bucky failing to glue googly eyes to felt. Bucky’s volume and frustration increased exponentially each time the damned things fell off. Sam doesn’t think much of it when he posts it to YouTube. It’s mostly for his own future edification. Like a video diary maybe. And he figures he can send the link to Steve when Bucky gives him the damn thing, maybe send his sister the link too, knowing she’ll get a kick out of it. He figures nobody’ll watch it seriously anyway.
Hence: all of Sam’s problems. Millions of people see it.
Sam watches the subscriber count increase steadily every second as he lays in bed the next morning. He can hear Bucky running the sewing machine in the other room.
“Fuck.” Sam says aloud to the empty room, “Well this sucks.”
As Tony loves to say: everything’s permanent on the internet.
And now Sam has to go tell his ex-assassin-turned-secret-agent boyfriend that he’s now an overnight internet sensation and it’s all his fault. Yay.
When Sam finds Bucky in the living room, he scans the immediate vicinity for sharp objects. First glance counts at least five. Great. So many things for Sam to get stabbed with! Woohoo!
Bucky looks up from his sewing and smiles, “Morning, sleepyhead. I woke up early, and I was inspired to sew a dress for Nat. Not sure why, but we’re winging it.”
Bucky seems to zero in on Sam’s anxiety, that whole ex-assassin-turned-secret-agent thing again. He cocks his head and let’s the highly patterned fabric sit idle in the sewing machine, “What’s up?”
“I’m uh-“ Sam counts another four sharp objects, and he chickens out for the time being. He wants to continue living at the moment, thank you very much, “I’m just hungry. Breakfast?”
Bucky beams instantly, “Eggs? Please make eggs. Eggs would be great right now. I’ll love you forever if you make eggs.”
“Yeah, alright. I can do eggs,” Then, under his breath (because Sam goddamn knows what’s coming), “You better remember that promise.”
Bucky doesn’t seem to notice, his smile easily reaching his eyes, “Thanks!”
“Yeah, Yeah,” Sam mutters and he shuffles into the kitchen. For the time it takes Sam to cook breakfast, Bucky continues to be unaware that he’s a smashing overnight sensation.
When Sam delivers the plate of scrambled eggs and sliced toast to Bucky, Bucky immediately zeroes in on the same expression that he had before. His fork’s 99% in his mouth when he furrows his brows and cocks his head. Mouth full, he announces, “You’re being weird.”
Now or never.
Sam pushes at a particularly large scrambled egg curd, and averts his eyes, “Yeah, uh, I have something to tell you actually.”
“Shit.” Bucky stabs carelessly at another bite of egg, and Sam’s eye follows the near-violent trajection of the fork until Bucky wrings out, “You wanna- like- leave me or something? I’d get it, I-“
And then Sam has to backtrack. Quickly.
“No, no, no, Buck. Come on. No. Not that. Not at all. Never.”
Bucky twitches anxiously, eyes furrowed intently on Sam.
“It’s stupid. I just- I posted a video on the internet of you making that giraffe yesterday. You know I like making videos, and I particularly liked this one. I didn’t think anybody would watch it. But you kinda went… viral.”
Bucky’s jaw visibly tenses, and Sam reminds himself of the nine sharp objects in the immediate vicinity- ten if you count the fork in Bucky’s hand, “I what?”
“You went viral. It means, like millions of people watched the video and liked it.”
Bucky stares. Jaw tense, eyes focused. It’s eerie.
“Show me.”
“What?”
“Show me the video.”
“Oh yeah, sure, uh- one sec,” Sam says, fumbling for his phone.
With just a few clicks on his phone, he’s got the video up, rotates the device, and presses it quickly into Bucky’s hand.
They sit there through the entire sixteen minute video, Bucky watching silently, Sam nervously gauging Bucky’s blank expression. A black screen with the words Like and Subscribe If You Care I don’t know scroll across the screen, then suddenly YouTube’s asking Bucky if he wants to watch again and they’re left in silence as Bucky stares down at the phone.
Sam can’t take it any longer, “So?” He asks, “Do you hate it with every fiber of your being? What’s up? What’s going on in that head of yours? Want me to take it down? Upload a video telling everybody they’ve been pranked?”
Bucky’s fingers visibly clench around the phone in his hands before he hands it back. It’s with a tentative shake of his head that he finally responds.
“No,” Bucky says carefully, “It’s fine.”
“It’s… fine?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“What do you mean fine?”
“I mean it’s fine, Sam. Jesus.”
“Well, no, hold on, what does that mean? Do you want to be a YouTuber? Do you care? Would you be mad if I uploaded another video? Do you want me to delete this one? Do you care if I leave it up, but never want me to upload anything of your face to the internet ever again? Bucky, fine has got a lotta different connotations. You gotta work with me here, buddy.”
Bucky sighs, fingers obviously itching to grab at his abandoned project. He sighs.
“I dunno. It’s whatever. I don’t really care.”
Sam watches as Bucky finally realigns the hem of the dress with the sewing machine needle and gets back to work. The sewing machine comes to life with a steady whir-buhh-bum-bum-bum sound, and it’s almost as if the conversation never happened.
Sam isn’t nearly satisfied by this response, but then again, he still has ten fingers and ten toes, so he counts himself lucky for the time being and returns to his plate of breakfast, content to watch Bucky sew for at least a few hours.
Bucky’s channel only gets more popular from there on out. Sam really hates his life sometimes.
A month later, Bucky has four more videos with over a million views each, a rapidly climbing subscriber count, an official theme song, and an inadequate amount of fabric for his next project.
“Sam!” Bucky calls from the next room over, voice a simultaneous holler and whine, “I need to go to the craft store.”
Sam presses save, leans back in his rolling chair, and watches for a moment. He spends most of his time nowadays when he isn’t sitting and recording with Bucky editing his videos. It’s been a fun month. Craft trips are way more frequent though.
Satisfied with his progress, Sam closes his tab and pushes the chair away from the desk, “Fine,” He calls back, voice loud and shrill like his grandma’s used to be when grandpa was late for dinner, “I’m coming! Hold on!”
And that’s how Sam finds himself standing in the clearance aisle of the nearest craft store for half an hour in complete silence.
Bucky stares pensively at the overwhelming colors of the racks of fabric.
Five more minutes, and Sam decides he’s about to go crazy. He pulls out his phone and starts playing candy crush just to pass the time. He can physically feel it when Bucky starts sideyeying him.
“What’s wrong, Buck?”
There’s a pout-like frown tugging at the corner of Bucky’s stifled expression, “You’re not going to help me?”
“I didn’t think you needed help.” Bonus combo points. Nice. “Do you need help?”
Bucky crosses his arms tellingly.
“Maybe.”
“Uh huh. That’s what I thought. You-“
“Oh my god, that’s Bucky Barnes!”
Sam’s interrupted by a posse of young girls who probably aren’t even in their teens yet. They all wear matching homemade beaded jewelry with their names and words like ‘BFF’ and ‘DREAM BIG’ spelled out in cheap white beads.
Bucky carefully pivots to meet them, mouth agape and eyes narrowed, “Uh, Yeah, I am. And, uh, who are you?”
The last time somebody shouted his name across a store warehouse, the person calling his name had a much more malicious-looking expression. And way less beads, that’s for sure.
“We’re fans!” The tallest of the girls gushes- she’s barely even 5’4”, and her tight topknot gives her an extra inch at least- and the other girls all nod in avid agreement like a flock of seagulls eyeing a kid’s sandwich at the pier, “Can we pleeeeeease take a picture with you?”
Nobody outside of a government agency has ever wanted to take a picture with Bucky. And they usually wanted the winter soldier, not him. At the very least, his hair is washed better now. The look on Bucky’s face would almost be funny if Sam didn’t entirely pity it.
Bucky’s eyes dart nervously to Sam, and Sam notices that he very obviously uses his human hand to tug his sweatshirt sleeve tightly over his robot one. Sam wraps a comforting arm around Bucky’s shoulders like an instinct, tugging him closer, and he smiles at the girls like a sweet southern pie.
“That’s a great idea. Want me to take it for you guys?”
The girls quite literally squeal in excitement, and Bucky nervously accepts the tiny group of fringe and pink and toy jewelry as the shortest girl passes Sam a smartphone. He takes the picture of the five very smiley children and the grumpy, nervous-looking man, and promptly returns the phone.
“Have a great day, guys!” Sam calls out to them as they giggle in the direction of the fabric paint aisle, and Bucky returns to his stance opposite the clearance fabrics. Sam carefully watches Bucky. He can’t help but smile, “Still need help?”
To Sam’s surprise, Bucky turns to him with wide eyes and nods, “What fabric do you think Stark would like?”
“Oh, shit.”
Bucky just nods, and they go back to staring helplessly at the wall of fabric.
In the end, Bucky splurges on a non-clearance fabric, but it’s a deep red color with gold stars, and it’s kinda perfect so he figures it’s worth the extra money.
Sam buys them milkshakes on the way home, and Bucky won’t shut up about the stupid shorts he wants to make for Stevie’s new boyfriend. It’s all kinda stupid, but Sam can’t wait to get home and upload this week’s video. It’s fun, plain and simple.
The whole Bucky’s a viral YouTuber thing goes from Fun Hobby to Holy Shit This Is Something Else Entirely the day that Steve Rogers sits down next to his childhood best friend, and Bucky teaches Captain America how to hand sew a pocket onto literally anything you want.
It’s notable to mention that there are five separate visible pockets of varying fabrics sewn onto the shirt that Bucky wears in the video. Some of them aren’t even functional. One has a button, one has a pointless flap. One’s stuffed with something unidentifiable and lumpy. It’s more than a little chaotic, but if nothing else it definitely speaks to Bucky’s newfound love for pockets (and the pocket-loving insanity that Sam has to live with).
The concentration that Steve puts toward Bucky’s mini lesson is commendable, and by the end of the video he has a tiny pocket sewn onto a tiny dress that he made for one of Nat’s cats. He excitedly explains his end product directly to the camera like a consummate professional and earns Bucky close to a million likes from women ages 12 to 49 with that comment alone.
Bucky tells Steve what a great job he’s doing, leans over and tugs at Steve’s near-professional tiny cat pocket with his pinky finger. Bucky himself uses the tutorial to sew a pocket onto one of Sam’s shirts (without asking), earning an off-camera chide that Steve snickers at on-camera.
Before Sam even presses UPLOAD, he knows the video’s gonna blow up. Captain America’s been extremely elusive both in public and on social media since he announced his fledgling relationship with Tony Stark nearly six months earlier. An appearance anywhere in and of itself would get views, even if it were filmed upside down using an outdated iPhone 4 by somebody unable to hold steady on a rocking boat. An appearance beside his childhood best friend is going to catapult all the way into the stratosphere two planets over.
The world wants to see what it’s like to be a superhero. Even if that means making silly crafts with your best friend. If anything, the public likes Steve and Bucky’s craft hour more than they like Steve’s typical Punchy Punch Time. It feels a little closer to reality.
“Like this?” Steve asks somewhere mid-video, narrowly avoiding poking himself with the needle. His tongue sticks out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrates.
Bucky cranes his entire body over Steve to check, “Uh huh,” He nods, “Lookin’ like a pocket.”
Sam can’t help but notice that the two of them bent over with their teeny tiny little needles in between their huge fingers, huddled close together, they look like mythical giants at a dwarf’s miniature-sized birthday party, a couple of mammoth’s borrowing an ant’s knitting needles.
“Hey, Buck?” Sam calls from off camera, smiling and hidden, “What’re you gonna put in this pocket?”
“Shut up, Sam,” Bucky murmurs, brows furrowing meaningfully just to the right of the camera, “I’m gonna put you in my goddamn pocket.”
Sam snorts loudly behind the camera.
Bucky spends most of the video trying to convince Steve to let Bucky give him an ear piercing. #PierceAmerica trends for multiple days after the video is published. A week and a half later, when Tony Stark retweets something from Sam’s twitter feed with the hashtag, it trends for another three days.
“I really hate you,” Steve tells Sam a few days later as he brings coffee to the Wilson-Barnes apartment. He slides a skinny, shrink-wrapped package across the countertop toward Sam, setting down a cardboard carrier with three coffees after it.
Sam looks down and barks out a laugh.
It’s a package of fake piercings, shiny little stickers to put on your nostril or the bridge of your nose. There’s a big sparkly stud intended for a fake navel piercing and various colors of stars intended to stud all the way up someone’s ear. Floating at the bottom of the bag are a couple metal rings with soft, rounded edges: fake nose rings intended to make Captain America extra stylish.
When they throw the package at Bucky and Sam explains what a septum piercing is, Bucky laughs so hard that he falls right off his chair, laugh-crying on the floor surrounded by discarded scraps of fabric.
“Okay,” Bucky wheezes as Steve glares, leveraging himself up onto the palms of his hands, “Maybe this YouTube famous thing has its perks. That’s fucking hilarious, Stevie.”
When Steve leaves later after a heaping serving of takeout, he leaves the small clear package on Bucky’s crafting table and patently ignores him when he calls to tell him. Sam finds it even funnier.
Sometimes Sam reads the comments. He deletes the ones that call Bucky a criminal or whatnot. He knows Bucky’s never gonna read them. Hell, he probably doesn’t even know that comments exist, that any nobody with a computer or a phone or access to a public library can say whatever they want about Bucky’s personal life without consequence, but Sam can’t stand the sight of them anyway. He gets them all deleted in deletion binges, and he responds to swarms of positive comments with reciprocated love and appreciation. Sometimes he signs himself, well known as the guy behind the camera, but admittedly sometimes he pretends he’s Bucky when he responds to the particularly sweet comments, tells people to keep doing what they love, to keep being awesome. He knows what it means to people to see a guy with one fake arm living the most normal life possible. He knows that sometimes only Bucky’s name will cut it, and he’s fine with that, happy about it even.
Sometimes he tries to show the comments to Bucky. Only ever his favorite of the favorites, the ones that make Sam so happy he ever posted a video in the first place. Even after his third time showing him a comment, he has to explain to Bucky what exactly it is he’s reading. Sam’s happy to do so: he’s used to being patient with Bucky when it comes to technology.
Somebody watched your video and put these words on it so you and anybody else who watched the video could see what they thought about it.
When he finally understands, Bucky smiles. He rereads the comment and goes as far as putting down his project.
“It really helped them that much?”
Sam nods, releases his hand and lets Bucky take a hold of the phone completely.
“Yeah,” Sam tells him, “It’s good for people to know that superheroes do normal things. That’s why they like you.”
“Huh,” Bucky says, and scrolls down to read the comment below it. Sam waits patiently as Bucky seems to think through something, process it. Sam knows that they’re doing something really good by posting these videos, not just good for views, but good for people. It makes people happy. The thought hasn’t quite occurred to Bucky yet. Eventually, Bucky hands the phone back to Sam, “Neat.”
He picks up his project and continues without another word. Sam wishes he could comprehend what this does for people like he does, but it’s not worth the trouble.
As Bucky’s subscriber count continues to grow, the whole world watches him. They watch Bucky have a relaxing day finger painting through the eyes of Sam’s camera as Brooklyn douses itself with rain. They tune in as Bucky fails to make a candle, the crooked wick bending in inconsistently colored wax like a back-broken trapeze artist in limbo. They watch Sam comedically moderate a Q&A about Bucky’s crafting and supply shopping preferences, the two of them bickering their way through a classic New York blizzard. They watch Bucky Barnes painting and sewing tutorials, crafting and vlog videos. The channel expands, and soon enough they’re uploading a video weekly.
More eager than ever before, however, the whole world watches as Bucky invites all six original Avengers to his and Sam’s tiny Brooklyn apartment. The whole group of them have to physically squeeze into frame for the impending video.
“Hey guys,” Bucky says at the beginning of the video, just him and a conspicuous swarm of beige wall behind him, the camera zoomed out just a little bit more than usual, “Today I have a couple of special guests, I guess. Come on guys, hurry up.”
The Avengers quickly fill up the beige background.
They stack on chairs, bodily lean over one another to fit in frame like a tenuous Jenga tower. In a genuine video format like this, they’d almost look like a gangly teenage friend group if it weren’t for the vague bags under their eyes and the ancient scars poking out from beneath articles of clothing, the watermark of their celebrity faces reminding every last viewer of the notorious reputations splayed out before the camera.
On one end, Clint pulls Bruce closer to make sure the soft spoken introvert doesn’t sneak off camera, his heavy arm slung familiarly over Bruce’s characteristically hunched shoulders as Thor looms behind them. On Bucky’s other side, Nat elbows Tony in the side in a familial gest as he gets closer than she wants. To an untrained eye, they could be mistaken for bickering siblings the way they goodnaturedly shove and quip meanly in such claustrophobic quarters. Tony and Steve each have one leg split on a shared chair, squished intimately close to one another, thighs pressed together because there’s simply no place else to go. Steve’s shoulders are scrunched up by his ears like he’s trying to make himself as small as possible to fit into the tiny, funny scene. For somebody now well-attuned to his scientifically superior body, Steve looks like a 14 year old in puberty on camera, squished up against Tony’s comparably small body. Sam audibly cracks up as the group of them struggle to fit in frame.
“Wilson, if I’d known you were gonna make us squeeze into your tiny apartment like this, I would’ve told you to come to my place,” Tony gibes, seemingly magnanimous.
He’d almost get away with the surface-level generosity with the viewers at home if the whole group of them didn’t groan audibly at the sound of it.
“Stop showing off, Stark,” Nat snipes, rolling her eyes skillfully.
The Avengers all talk over each other to chide Tony’s typical lack of humility. It’s chaotic and noisy, and later when Sam edits it, he can barely make out what any one person is saying, but it sums up how the Avengers really are more than any other moment captured on video in Avengers history, so he keeps it in.
“Get over yourself, Stark,” Bucky deftly comments, making gleeful eye contact with Sam off camera before steering the group back around to the topic of the video.
In the video, Bucky teaches the whole group of them various ways to upcycle (a word that Sam had to teach him) old stuff to make pet toys.
He has Steve and Tony on cutting duty as Thor and Nat braid strips from one of Bucky’s old flannel shirts together into ropes. Clint sticks water bottles in old socks (notably clean ones, though the archer loudly bitches about them being dirty and gross just to be annoying throughout the entire video) and ties them off into chew toys while Bruce and Bucky wrap small amounts of catnip into tiny, tied-together pockets made with leftover squares of fabric.
Sam calls out questions and taunts while they work.
He asks, bodiless, about the recent mission that went live on the news. Steve goes grave and serious when he talks about it, sounding like he’s talking from a teleprompter running somewhere downtown, a mask over his cheery face (not pierced, thank you very face), and Tony goes uncharacteristically quiet beside him as he focuses on cutting flannel. There had been casualties, but Sam and Steve both agreed this would be a good platform to get the truth out about the job. They’d all taken it hard. When Steve finishes, there’s a heavy lull in the air, a unanimously unspoken moment of silence. Clint breaks the silence with an inappropriate joke, and it’s almost like it never happened. Steve’s always been grateful for good humor.
Sam poses an unrelated question about the Avengers’ favorite cereal brands.
Sam insists the video isn’t sponsored even as Bucky vehemently declares Froot Loops the greatest food of modern Western civilization. It’s one of the few times that Bruce speaks up during the whole video when he patently agrees with Bucky.
“Froot Loops are the superior cereal,” Bruce pipes up, bending over their work station to make friendly eye contact with Bucky, “You’re right. There’s no arguing with Froot Loops.”
Everybody knows better than to argue when Bruce declares something The Best, and Froot Loops are deigned the Official Best Cereal.
The group works themselves into this rhythm after awhile that reflects The Avengers that the world more commonly knows. Sure, when they’re together for social hour they’re like a group of kids at an unsupervised recess, but when it comes to working together they know how to do it better than anybody else. They form a wordless sort of assembly line, this perfect example of teamwork, persistent and unrelenting.
By the time they’re out of socks and flannel pieces, there’s a sizable pile of toys forming a small mountain on Bucky’s cramped crafting table, and the whole group of them are left staring at their work.
There’s a beat of silence as they take in the spilled bits of catnip and the tiny triangles of scrap that didn’t quite make the cut littering the table. The seven of them made a huge mess, and they all know Bucky’s gonna be very passive aggressive later when he cleans it up by himself, sending photographic evidence in their group chat. Nobody moves to help though. Sam stifles a laugh. Bucky’s head snaps up in the direction of the camera.
“So we did it,” Bucky says, the beat pulled just too long. Clint swings a bottle-stuffed sock idly in the air, nearly clipping Thor in the jaw in the process, “I guess I should mention that we’re donating all these toys to an animal shelter in Manhattan. Steve’s an ambassador at the shelter and a frequent volunteer, and Tony’s agreed to donate five grand to them too along with the toys.”
Sam watches as Steve gets this weird, contorted expression, like two emotions trying and struggling to exist at once. First, he gets this shy blush, high in his cheek and highly characteristic of the obnoxiously modest Steve Rogers that Sam knows, seemingly embarrassed to be outed as the kind, animal-loving person that he is. But then, Bucky mentions Tony’s donation and this look of pure, pleasant surprise flashes over his face, his mouth falling into this perfect ‘o’ shape as he whips his head to face Tony.
In Tony’s defense, despite his pomp and faux-modesty, he doesn’t brag about his genuine generosity, just shrugs and offers a close lipped smile when Steve gapes.
“Seriously?” Steve demands, the rest of the Avengers swiveling in tandem to conspicuously watch their interaction, “You’re really gonna do that?”
Tony shrugs, “Why not?”
Steve doesn’t have a retort.
Clint and Thor break out into an applause that makes Steve turn away from Tony, unable to get away because of the shared chair. Sam couldn’t have planned it better himself.
The outro features the group of them huddled together, telling the viewers to like and subscribe like some sort of scripted summer camp campfire song, Sam being the counselor and poorly-hired music director in one. Seven arms are tangled and their shoulders are pressed close together. It’s a very comeradic scene.
The video cuts to a black screen with white words repeating the Avengers’ final line, the obligatory LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE :). Ten seconds of that and the video cuts to a bonus clip-
Steve throws a strip of flannel at Bucky over Tony’s head, forcing Tony to duck down to save his hair and therefore jostling Nat with the movement.
Nat looks like she’s about to kick somebody’s ass, eyes hard as she focuses on an orange and black plaid braid.
On the other side of Bucky, Clint looks carefully at the concentrating people around him before sticking his tongue into a small pile of catnip cupped in his hand. Thor notices and starts cracking up, much to Clint’s chagrin.
Still bothered that he had to duck, Tony half-glares/half-grins at Steve, “Watch what you’re doing with your mammoth arms, motherfu-“
The video cuts off before Tony’s able to finish his profanity.
When Sam finishes editing the video, he knows what he has on his hands. It's something good. It’s something people are gonna want to see. It’s a lot of power placed in one blue-lettered button, the word UPLOAD.
He sits on his bed in the dark with his laptop warm on his lap, the cursor hovering over the word UPLOAD for three minutes straight then.
“Oh, screw it,” He says aloud, then presses aforesaid button.
He’s fully aware that it’s about to launch their channel farther into virality.
The video takes no time to become the most viewed video on YouTube.
The world watches, enraptured, as Sam and Bucky continue to upload more videos. They still have fun with it, which- despite the growing subscriber count that Sam watches with fascination- is all that really matters.
They don’t have another massively popular video like that for awhile. No guest stars, no special appearances. Just Bucky, his crafts, Sam, and his camera.
“Hey, Sam?” Bucky asks offhandedly one day, pulling his arm far out to tug a long stitch taut, “I think I wanna try woodworking.”
Sam immediately has two thoughts.
The first is: “Oh god, no. Have mercy on us all. This is gonna be messy.”
The second thought, this one said aloud: “Can I film it?”
Tony very graciously sets Bucky up with a workspace and an expert, gets him all the necessary equipment whilst steadfastly refusing to tell Bucky how much it all cost. Sam tries to ask him, just as he’s slipping out, a small, secretive small on his face, how much it all really cost. Tony refuses to tell.
Turns out, Bucky’s no good at woodworking. He only ever does it the one time.
Bucky interacting with absolute confusion and awe with the woodworking expert, his jaw dropped expression, becomes a brief, vaguely niche meme, spreads through Twitter, then dies out as per the typical life cycle of a viral video.
He takes home the chair that the expert makes alongside him, and sets it reverently behind his crafting table.
They make more videos. Bucky tries his hand at watercolor and oil pastels, dipping his toes into something more artsy. He’s not all that good, and the video doesn’t get quite as many views, but he has fun, so Sam still records and uploads. He quickly gets over his artsy fartsy phase and returns to making felt plushies for his friends.
However, just on the cusp of the end of his painting phase, Bucky invites another special guest to join him. He and Wanda Maximoff- most recently better known as the Scarlet Witch- make a video where they paint on denim jackets.
Bucky decides at the beginning of the video, staring miserly down at the dark denim, that he wants to paint a sloth on his jacket, because why the hell not. Wanda takes a single glance at her jacket, a lighter wash denim than Bucky’s,and she seemingly inherently knows what she’s going to paint. She sketches out this pretty bouquet of pastel flowers on the back of the jacket and gets to work.
“Hey, Wanda?” Sam asks as they paint the first layer, “Can you tell us what it’s been like as the newest member of the Avengers?”
It’s the question she gets asked more than any other, but Wanda still stops to think about it, her face scrunching in pensivity before dissolving into a smile, “The learning how to be a hero thing, it’s- well, it’s tough. It’s a lot of responsibility. But the being-a-part-of-the-Avengers part is really fun. It’s really crazy how they’re like a family, and for some reason they just accepted me right off the bat. It’s wild,” She smiles, an obvious memory traipsing through her mind. Bucky makes a broad grey stroke on his jacket as she continues, “I don’t know, maybe they just needed another woman in the group to balance out some of the rampant testosterone, but they were all very welcoming.”
Sam snorts with laughter, “Rampant testosterone?”
“Ohhh, yeah. The other day Stark and Thor arm wrestled for the last chicken wing. I mean exactly what I said.”
The thing is, none of the superheroes in the room are really surprised by an arm wrestling competition for a chicken wing. Weird, sure. But not surprising. Not with the group they know so well. The rest of the world has started getting a similar picture.
Sam asks Wanda about her growing instagram, insists that they’ll include a link in the description, and she tells him how weird it’s been to have a platform because of something that had initially been instilled in her through malice.
“I’m grateful really,” Wanda says, creating soft petals of pastel pink, “That the Avengers has allowed me to do something good with these powers, it’s really great. And being a part of something so high profile has given me a platform I never otherwise would’ve had.”
Sam and Bucky both get it. They really do. They all kinda walked into something, stumbled into it really, tripping one foot over the other into something much bigger than any of them. Maybe it’s big enough for a god like Thor or a glorified propaganda piece like Steve, especially somebody with an ego the size of Tony’s, but for the three of them? It’s like walking into a party you weren’t invited to and being called the mother of the bride the moment you step in.
Wanda uses Instagram not only to speak out about civil rights and minority creators, but also to promote independent minority-owned businesses. She buys, styles, and models pictures of herself wearing clothes from small time businesses.
Most close to heart, though, she uses her platform to ensure that Sokovia’s legacy lives on. She acts as an ambassador of Sokovian culture, promoting charities and places people can donate to aid survivors.
Sam asks her about it, and she’s more than happy to talk about it. She knows how many people watch Bucky’s videos.
“Yeah, I work with a lot of the funds that do relief work for survivors from the Battle of Sokovia. We’ve been raising a lot of money because there’s a lot of people who got displaced after, and we can always use more help. If you go to my Instagram, I have multiple places linked that can always use volunteers or even donations of any amount at any time.”
“And we’ll be including the links for those charities in the description as well,” Sam adds, and Wanda smiles gratefully to the right of the lense.
A few minutes later, they finish their jackets.
Bucky finishes first, leans over Wanda to watch her make the finishing touches on her project. He looks from her feminine bouquet to his vague animal caricature, and back again.
“Dang,” Bucky says, looking between their pieces. He had spent most of the video concentrating on his cartoony sloth and sniping at Sam. It’s the first time he’s taken a serious look at her piece beyond watching her mix whites and pinks and blues on their shared palette, “Yours is way better than mine.”
“Noo!” Wanda insists, looking kindly at his friendly-looking, gray blob, “I love yours! It’s so cute!”
She finishes it off with a tiny stroke of violet on one of her delicate flowers and sets her paint down. They assess their projects together as they dry.
“Yours is pretty,” Bucky says earnestly, “It’s very you.”
The last part of the video follows Bucky and Wanda as they run down the stairs of their apartment to the short sidewalk by the front doors. They laugh as they race down, Sam following after with the camera and a hearty cackle of his own as he hurries to keep up.
They stop at the bottom of the stairs so Wanda can tie Bucky’s long hair into a neat top knot on the top of his head. Bucky has to stoop just a little, bending at the knees as Wanda stands on top of the bottom step so she can properly reach.
Sam catches on video the way Bucky feels blindly at the top of his head, familiarizing himself with the new hair style, then smiles gratefully at the youngest Avenger. Sam’s secretly glad that nobody but Bucky sees the fond smile on his face, hidden behind the camera.
They end up posing in front of the exposed brick along the front of the building. Wanda tells Bucky he looks great as he strikes an awkward pose, and Bucky wraps his arm around Wanda’s shoulders as they turn back to look at Sam’s camera, jacket designs facing out, like they’re in some sort of 90’s sitcom opening theme.
Bucky’s top knot bobs as the two of them goof around under Sam’s joking direction.
Later, when Wanda’s leaving, her new denim jacket folded carefully over her arm, Sam and Bucky walk her to their front door.
“Thanks for coming on,” Sam says, one comfortable arm looped around Bucky’s middle, smiling at Wanda standing in the open door, “I’ll let you know when the video goes up.”
“This was fun,” Wanda tells them, smiling as she idly straightens out the jacket draped against her arm, “I want you to know, I really am a fan of the show.”
Sam can tell there’s a look of surprise on Bucky’s face without even turning to look at him, “Really?”
Wanda nods earnestly, “Yeah, it’s really cool that you guys show the world how normal superheroes can be. It makes normal people feel like they can be superheroes too. Most of the time Steve and Tony are the only ones who get media attention which I totally get, but everybody seems to think that the rest of us are either egotistical geniuses or morality-obsessed workaholics. But really, we’re all just people trying to do a little good in the world. I’ve tried to make people see that they can do good even if they don’t have superpowers, but I know I tend to come off as preachy. You guys though? Your personalities come through your videos. It’s inspiring.”
Bucky doesn’t have any words beside an inelegant, “Huh.”
Sam thanks Wanda for the compliment, and they send her home.
When Sam closes the door behind her, Bucky’s standing in the hallway with his feet apart, looking confused and thoughtful.
“You good, babe?”
Bucky jumps minutely, almost like he forgot Sam was there, “Uh, yeah,” He says slowly and unconvincingly. He thinks hard before he continues- Sam waits, watching, “I thought it was just fun. I didn’t realize we were doing that.”
Sam rolls his eyes and throws his arm over Bucky’s shoulders again, tugging him down the small hall back toward the living room, “This is what I’ve been telling you, Buck. It matters to people.”
Bucky can’t seem to coalesce an intelligent response. Luckily, he’s able to slide into the chair at his crafting table and get to work without another word. His current project- a small plush doll for Clint’s impending newborn- allows him to work in a pensive silence.
A few days later, with the video uploaded, Sam shows Bucky the pictures that Wanda posted to her Instagram, sliding through the various poses. Silly and sophisticated and smiley.
Bucky stares at the pictures for a long time, swiping between them as Sam lays his head in his lap.
Sam thinks he’s gonna say something about how different he looks. Because he does look different. Sam remembers being handed Bucky’s file way back when, stamped with more TOP SECRET, CONFIDENTIAL stickers than a little kid at a sticker convention. The headshot had been haunting- hollow eyes, deep frown, long, greasy hair. He’d looked like a ghost, and Sam had asked Steve at the time if this phantom was worth bringing back to life. Now though, in these pictures, his hair is pulled prettily back, his dark eyes crinkle with laughter, his teeth show through his smile. He looks happy. The angelic forgery of the specter he’d once been. Sam sees the change everyday he wakes up, and he smiles. But he knows sometimes Bucky forgets. He isn’t the wraith he used to be.
But Bucky doesn’t say any of this. Instead, he takes a long, studying look at Wanda’s post and after several minutes of careful consideration, snorts with laughter, “Why’d nobody tell me that my sloth looks like a cylindrical raccoon? You let me wear that thing to the grocery store yesterday, jerk.”
He hands the phone back to Sam without a word of the pictures themselves.
Sam smothers a sigh as he turns off his phone and sets it on his stomach. He watches Bucky from his spot in his lap.
“I like it,” Sam insists, despite Bucky’s disbelieved, cock-browed look.
“Liar.”
“No, seriously,” Sam says, and he strains his neck to see the jacket hanging on the back of a kitchen chair, “I like it.”
“Whatever. If you like it that much, then you can take it.”
“Fine. Maybe I will.”
The next day, a group of fans (five ladies somewhere in the realm of yoga-going female millennials, plus one baby in a carriage) recognize Sam at a Farmer’s market. He’s wearing the jacket.
“You’re the guy from those YouTube videos with the superhero!”
The one with the baby agrees: yeah, he totally is.
“That’s the jacket he made in the video with the Scarlet Witch, isn’t it?”
Sam nods proudly, “Yep. It is.” He really wishes Bucky were here right now, but he’d had to meet Nat for lunch.
“I didn’t realize how much help the Sokovians needed until I watched that video,” One of the ladies says excitedly, this one wearing a dark sports bra that matches both her headband and leggings, “I’ve been donating to some of the charities that you guys talked about. It’s a good cause.”
Sam smiles, “That’s great to hear.”
“Can we take a picture with you?”
“Of course.”
Sam points happily at the back of the jacket, twisting backwards so the painted sloth can be seen. The girls all pose around him, the little baby perched half-asleep on its mom’s hip as she squeezes into the picture.
“Thank you!” The women cheer happily as they stroll away. Sam waves happily back.
For the rest of the time as Sam shops around for fresh produce, he’s got a tiny self-satisfied smile on his face.
He searches for the picture later on Instagram as he and Bucky wait for their chicken marsala to finish cooking.
“I ran into some fans at the farmer’s market today,” Sam says as Bucky stirs at their dinner with a long wooden spoon. He pushes the phone at Bucky, grinning proudly.
The jacket is displayed prominently in the group’s goofy pose, everybody excitedly drawing attention to it.
Bucky snorts and pushes the phone back at Sam, “You look like a dumbass.”
“Do not. I look fuckin’ hot, Bucky.”
“Nope. You look like a total dork with that jacket.”
“Whatever,” Sam eventually concedes, stealing the spoon from Bucky so he can taste the sauce, “I still like it, no matter what you say.”
Despite Bucky’s lack of confidence with his sloth-painting skills, the channel doesn’t seem to want to stop growing. In fact, Sam proudly notices a slight bump in Wanda’s insta followers after their collab, but that’s beside the point.
Bucky’s fame grows, and Bucky barely even notices.
He keeps doing what he’s doing. He wakes up in the morning and starts crafting with barely any notice for Sam to start recording. The channel doesn’t seem to want to plateau, and Bucky couldn’t even care less, just keeps chugging along whilst it brings him joy.
Sam’s kinda always in shock about all of it, surprised, amazed, in awe, in love.
Not a lot of people are able to resist the lure of fame and popularity quite as patently as Bucky Barnes. And whilst it is infuriating at times, to Sam, it’s enduring. Maybe it’s a masochist thing. Maybe he just really loves Bucky. Sam doesn’t think too hard about it.
He watches the subscriber count continue to grow. Videos continue to get millions of views. Old videos continue to be watched and rewatched. It’s all very weird, somehow weirder than being invited into a posse of superhuman, morally superior public figures. Sam gets a new camera, upgrades. Bucky doesn’t even notice.
Journalists contact the two of them. Most are small time blogs interested in Bucky’s rise to fame or his peculiar history. Some want to find out more about the other Avengers than they actually care about Bucky or Sam. But a couple of the journalists are from real life magazines, with monthly subscribers and paper copies and venerable profilers. Bucky turns down each offer straight away. He’s completely uninterested.
It’s all a crazy ride, and Bucky doesn’t care at all.
It’s a day that Sam’s promised not to film. Just the two of them and Bucky’s craft corner. An episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians plays at a low volume on the TV. Sam lounges on the couch, scrolling idly through his Instagram feed.
“Hey, Buck?”
“Huh,” Bucky grunts back neanderthal-ishly.
Sam twists on the couch, his elbows keeping him held up against the armrest closest to Bucky, “Do you have any idea how many people watch your videos?”
“Not really, no.”
Sam knows the answer to his question before he asks it, but he has to say the words aloud. Bucky’s so amazingly himself, that Sam has to double check because he’s so constantly impossibly in awe of the Bucky Barnes he knows.
“Do you really not care about all the fame you’ve gotten from the channel?”
Bucky shrugs and takes a bite of the Auntie Anne’s pretzel that Sam had brought home for him, using his free hand to pin two points of a piece of fabric together, “I dunno,” Bucky says offhandedly through a full mouth of cinnamon sugar, “It’s all the same to me.”
He knew it was the answer he would get.
Sam turns and collapses back onto the couch. Onscreen, Khloe curses at Scott. Sam likes a picture Steve posted on Instagram yesterday with a group of sickly kids.
It’s the video that Sam films with Bucky the next day that sums up what the YouTube channel means to him. For all that it’s nothing to Bucky, it’s everything to Sam. Not because of the fame and the impressive number listed next to SUBSCRIBERS. But rather, because of the time he gets to spend with Bucky, his best friend, the love of his life.
During filming, Sam proposes.
Bucky’s in the middle of trying to figure out how to thin out the paint to do an acrylic pour when Sam ducks under the huge standing ring light, carefully avoiding the mess of tangled chords as he steps over the tripod leg and inches onto Bucky’s side of the camera.
As there’s only been a handful of times when the camera light has blinked red and Sam’s wandered off from behind it, Bucky looks up from his paint, red seeping slowly onto his fingers, and watches Sam navigate their cramped lighting setup.
“What’s up, Sam?”
“I wanted to do this while the camera was rolling. While you’re sitting in that goddamn chair of yours. Here, in our home. Where I fell in love with you. We’ve built something here, Bucky, and I want to make sure you know how committed I am to it and you. How beyond happy you make me.”
Bucky crinkles his nose, narrows his eyes, “What’re you doing?”
Cognizant of a pin cushion close by on the floor, Sam lowers himself down to one knee and looks earnestly up at Bucky.
“Will you marry me?”
There’s paint all over Bucky’s fingers at this point and he doesn’t even notice, his expression goes lax.
“Wha- whaaat?”
Sam pulls out a ring box and cracks a smile, “You heard me. Bucky Barnes, will you marry me?”
Bucky gently sets down the blue plastic cup, eyes wide, “Are you joking right now, Sam? I swear to god if you’re joking. If you’re pulling a prank on me just because you think it’ll make a funny video. I swear to god, I know how to do-“
“When have I ever pranked you?” His boyfriend’s an ex-assassin-turned-super-spy. Sam knows better than to prank him. This is serious, he’s serious. He loves Bucky more than anything else in the world.
Bucky nods, lightning fast.
“Is that a yes to the no pranking or to the proposal?”
“To the- well, to both I guess actually. Yeah. I- Yes, Sam. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Bucky wipes red paint all over his shirt, then leans in and presses paint-sticky hands to Sam’s face. His eyes grow wide at the sight of the ring.
“Are you joking?”
Sam shakes his head, “I told you, I’m not. I love you, Buck.”
Bucky sounds like he isn’t breathing. For a moment, Sam worries he’s gonna have to talk him through a panic attack or call 911 (“yes, hello, I just proposed to my ex-assassin-turned-normal-person-slash-super-spy boyfriend and he was so surprised that his whole body stopped functioning properly can you come by and help me out? No, I think the wedding’s gonna be great, why do you ask?”), but then he’s grabbing eagerly at the ring box and slipping the simple silver plated ring onto his finger.
Bucky looks down at Sam and smiles.
The button blinks red, and Bucky still has to finish his painting. Sam’s never been so excited to press UPLOAD.
This time, the world watches as their love story unravels for everybody to see.