the-wordbutler:

I’ve talked a little on here (without fleshing it out too much because I’m ages from using it) about how Bucky screwed up his shoulder in the service, how it bothers him now and will bother him worse in the future. But I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about Steve and Bucky’s friendship with Sam and Riley, how they hang out together, and how they’re probably that clump of friends who hang out at all the church events to the point where the old ladies serving the punch just call them The Barneses and the Wilsons, like they’re one big unit.

(Steve’s never offended when the old church ladies call him by Bucky’s last name. Riley pulls a face every time.)

But Sam and Riley both served, too, and that led me to the thought of Riley being seriously injured before his discharge. Like, maybe that’s why they left the service: Riley was badly hurt and couldn’t return, and Sam worked as hard as he could to follow him out. Which is maybe why they have a (big, dopey, wonderful) service dog at home, why Sam spends a lot of his free time kicking around the VA (Riley maybe works there, a page from the movie since Sam’s a law student in this), why sometimes Steve and Bucky drop off a crockpot meal or something when Sam sends one of those texts before church on Sunday:  rough night and morning, see you next week.

I’m not sure if Riley’s wounds are physical or not (I play with the idea of a lost limb, maybe a leg), but mentally, it’s rough, sometimes.

And when Dot first notices—because you know she will, she’s smart and observant (like both her daddies)—she just tips her head to the side and asks when Riley’ll be better. “Sick people get better,” she says when Steve blinks at her, exasperation in her tone. “Riley and Sam miss church when Riley’s sick, so when will he stop being sick and be better?”

Steve’s face is soft when he crouches down in front of her. “Remember a long time ago, when we talked about why Uncle Tony’s sometimes so … ” He searches for a good word, and he rolls his eyes when Bucky mouths unglued. “Why Uncle Tony goes a million miles an hour like he’s had way too much chocolate?” Dot nods, and Steve forces a little smile. “Remember why we said Uncle Tony does that?”

“Because his brain’s not always nice to him,” Dot reports. 

“Right. And Riley’s brain isn’t very nice to him, either.” Steve brushes hair out of her face. “And sometimes, that means he and Sam stay home from church and cuddle with Captain Fluffybritches.”

Bucky snickers the way he always snickers at the dog’s name—“He came up with it,” Sam’d exclaimed back when they’d landed the dog, and Riley’d rolled his eyes at him—but Dot frowns. “Do lots of people have mean brains?” she asks.

“More than you’d think,” Steve tells her, and she nods like she understands.

Riley’s a little more grounded by the time they bring over a bucket of chicken and all the sides that night, and Sam invites them to stay for dinner. “Even if this is half a watermelon away from a stereotype,” he criticizes.

“Only for one of us,” Riley calls after him, and then Dot’s sort of tossing herself around his waist like she’s missed him, which is weird for Dot and Riley’s relationship. (Most of the time, they play dress up and engage in very serious meta-analysis of the latest Sofia the First episode.) Steve and Bucky flinch like they want to apologize, but Riley lights up like a sunrise. “What, did you miss my off-key singing this morning?”

Dot shakes her head before she glances up at him. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry you have a mean brain, and I hope it gets less mean like my Uncle Tony’s did after he went to the Four Trees place.”

Bucky face-palms, Steve blushes, and Sam laughs hard enough that he almost drops KFC all over the floor. But Riley just grins at her and ruffles her hair. “I hope it works that way, too,” he says, and then he leads Dot off to find the plastic flower crown she wears every time she comes over.

I liked this scrap that you wrote about Dot and Riley, I think because as a disabled person, and as the partner of a disabled person, I have feelings about how people talk about disabled people in our society. The line that stood out for me is ‘sick people get better’, because, although it’s a four-year-old saying it, that’s the prevailing view of society, that illness, injury and disability are things you ‘get better’ from, and really, that’s not always the case, but no one seems to want to admit that – that there are people in our society, in our schools, in our workplaces, in our churches and in our culture, who don’t get well, who won’t ever get better, but who are just as human as they are, and who belong just as much as an able-bodied or able-minded person does. People get uncomfortable when you challenge that, too. I went for disability payment after my diagnosis, and the person processing me said something about ‘maybe in the future’ and I corrected her saying ‘no, I’m autistic, it’s neurological, I was born this way and it’s permanent’, and she responded instantly that I was being pessimistic and defeatist. I wasn’t. But no one wants to accept that disabled people aren’t part of some inspiration porn story that ends with them being able-bodied or able-minded at the end or ‘just as good as’. Our society shouldn’t be a club with the worthy being accepted and the rest on the fringes, but it is. And until able-bodied and able-minded people accept that we’re worthy just as we are, without ‘overcoming’ anything, that’s the way it’s going to stay.