Only the Most Beautiful
The gorgeous, gut-punching, life-affirming fics I come back to time and time again. Sometimes it's love, unrequited or fulfilled. Sometimes it's friendship, family. Sometimes it's angst and horror and unhappy endings, sometimes everything is soft and nothing hurts.
Mostly Marvel, with some other gems. Use the bookmarks to see the full list of works with collector's commentary. Skip to the best-of-the-best if you want to be like that, but they're all the best.
(Maintained by WaterMe)
(Open, Moderated)
Random works
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Summary
When Julian volunteered to spend six months on Cardassia he set in motion a chain of events which forever changed his life - and Garak's.
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Birds Eating Other Birds by aloneintherain
Fandoms: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
30 Jul 2016
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Summary
Peter wishes he hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t be reduced to this—limp-crawling through the rabbit burrows that is Oscorp Tower, a monster of a man on his heels, bloody and bruised and choking on a panic attack.
Series
- Part 1 of devil in a sunday hat
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4 Minute Window by Speranza
Fandoms: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
06 Jan 2015
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Summary
"Look, if they catch me," Bucky muttered, "they're either going to kill me or they're going to put me in a box with a little window and—Steve, I can't."
Series
- Part 1 of 4 Minute Window
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half the night you’re a dependable chap (then the too white teeth all night) by voxofthevoid
Fandoms: Captain America - All Media Types
16 Apr 2019
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Steve Rogers is a sad fucking man, but he’s a soldier down to his bones, and Bucky’s always been weak to that particular combination of tragic eyes and fistfuls of blood.
That’s why he’s plastered to the walls and incapable of looking away from Rogers’s heaving chest and cracked knuckles. He doesn’t speak a word, doesn’t even dare to breathe loudly until a vicious punch from Rogers sends the poor bag flying across the room, spitting sand everywhere. There’s no startled sound from Rogers. He doesn’t even freeze, just huffs like he’s inconvenienced by his inanimate victim’s inability to withstand the pounding.
Bucky bites his tongue so he doesn’t offer himself as a replacement.
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Bucky makes a bad decision that snowballs in predictable fashion.Series
- Part 1 of couldn't get the boy to kill me
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trouble is i don’t wanna let go by cheekysstyles
Fandoms: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Deadpool - All Media Types
12 Apr 2020
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Usually when Wade pictured Spidey straddling him and panting from exertion, it wasn’t quite like this.
or Wade wakes up to Spiderman literally holding an entire building up so it doesn’t crush them. Both of them realize pretty quickly the building is coming down anyway.
Series
Random bookmarks
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John isn’t all that interested when he finds out that Mycroft is pregnant. Mary just left, things with Sherlock are difficult, and nothing is the same, most of all not John himself. But then there is a bond needed, a baby born, and it was never meant to happen like this, but somehow...
Family, love, sex, and making it work - the complicated way. Post season three Omega Verse AU!
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 272,549
- Chapters:
- 127/127
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 3,969
- Kudos:
- 2,375
- Bookmarks:
- 378
- Hits:
- 73,354
Bookmarked by WaterMe
06 Oct 2017
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Bookmarker's Notes
This story is the reason I got an AO3 account - I knew I had to keep up with this story as it unfolded, chapter by chapter. It's long, but worth it. Read if you enjoy: realistic interpretations of A/B/O; imperfect but well-intentioned polyamory; adorable genius children; older people being vibrantly sexual beings; burn so slow it physically hurts.
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dream of the fisherman's wife by Anonymous for sallysparrow017
Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe
12 Nov 2019
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The team, accompanied by a recently recalibrated Bucky Barnes, go investigate an abandoned Hydra base. Steve gets separated from the rest of the group, and discovers something horrifying lurking in the underground base. Or, rather, it discovers him.
(Or: the Lovecraftian tentacle fic that no one asked for.)
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 7,678
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 7
- Kudos:
- 170
- Bookmarks:
- 31
- Hits:
- 4,341
Bookmarked by WaterMe
20 Jun 2020
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Bookmarker's Notes
absolutely breathtaking. the most beautiful horror tentacle porn you'll ever read.
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You cannot covet a boy who is yours.
Bookmarked by WaterMe
19 Nov 2020
Bookmarker's Collections:
Bookmarker's Notes
Prettier than anything tagged "Affectionate Cannibalism" has any right to be <3
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I'll build a house inside of you by magdaliny
Fandoms: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
30 Jul 2015
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Natalia is stacking blocks very carefully when the adults come into the room. None of them look at her, because they're all looking at her father. He's wearing combat gear, and the hair on the left side of his head is slicked back with blood. He smells like smoke and something unnameable, sweet and dark and a little sickly in her nose.
Father is saying, “Don't be ridiculous. The only thing children are good at is disobeying.”
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In the Good Old Summertime by Crockzilla for notlucy
Fandoms: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Deadpool - All Media Types
12 Oct 2018
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Peter Parker works four jobs and is generally angry at the state of the world. Then he meets a veteran with radical notions about social justice. And they both love Judy Garland.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 64,422
- Chapters:
- 15/15
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 608
- Kudos:
- 1,163
- Bookmarks:
- 301
- Hits:
- 25,098
Bookmarked by WaterMe
20 Oct 2019
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Bookmarker's Notes
The story that made me fall in love with Peter Parker and Wade Wilson falling in love.