garbage all the way down (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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hydratrashmeme2014-12-07 08:43 am
trashmod) wrote in hydratrashmeme2014-12-07 08:43 am
Dumpster #2: ...'Cause a Hydra Trash Party don't stop
Unholy hell-miracle achieved! Welcome to Bad Guys Do Bad Things To Your Faves 2: Electric Boogaloo. AKA the seamy sexual-violence-and-violent-sex underbelly of Captain America fandom, AKA the Hydra Trash Party kinkmeme. As usual, BLANKET NON-CON AND NSFW WARNINGS apply: just assume going in that everything in this landfill is unfit for human consumption.
Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, and dark!good guys AUs are off-topic.
[Round 1] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained bygreenkirtle)] [Round 2 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]
Round 2 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 3.
Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, and dark!good guys AUs are off-topic.
[Round 1] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained by
greenkirtle)] [Round 2 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]Round 2 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 3.
FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5a/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-12 08:36 am (UTC)(link)vague references to suicidal ideation in this section.
+
how’s bucky doing? Sam texts Steve the following morning after a restless, mostly sleepless night.
If Steve thinks it’s weird that Sam is going all mother hen on his best friend who Sam barely even knows, he doesn’t say anything about it, just responds with Good. He’s eager to hit the road again.
Sam’s heart sinks, but he’s not all that surprised. With the admittedly less-than-stellar way that he’d handled yesterday’s incident, he didn’t really expect that Bucky would have had an overnight change of heart and decided to come clean to Steve.
Then again, maybe Steve was right when he said that this is what Bucky needs. Maybe it’s a crucial first step that needs to be taken in order for Bucky to truly be able to start paving his own path. It makes a certain amount of sense, that he might want to destroy all evidence of who he was and start over with a clean slate. Trigger a big bang and rewrite the entire universe from scratch, shedding the cumbersome meteor belts of history.
It’s a drive that Sam understands all too well. The desire to fully sever yourself from who you used to be, as if your past were a ball and chain that not only held you down, but that was also visible for the rest of the world to see and pass judgment on – a badge of shame, a scarlet letter of weakness.
Once Sam had recovered to the point where he’d successfully reintegrated himself into the normal world, he’d spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to pretend that he only existed from this moment forward, and that everything that had come before hadn’t happened. He left New York for D.C. in hopes of being able to set up a new life for himself, if not an entirely new identity – one that wasn’t tainted by the horrors he'd seen, the atrocities he’d taken part of, the violence he’d committed not only against others, but also against himself. He kept his past extremely private, rarely talking about his previous occupation, let alone what it had cost him. Basically, he just went around with a smile on his face as if he’d been this harmless and healthy way all along.
(Nobody needed to know that just a few months ago he was doing crazy person shit like buying hundreds of dollars worth of canned food and bottled water so that he could stay in his basement for weeks at a time because it was the only place in the house that was safe.)
Now, he’s not sure why it had been so important to him to put on that act. Maybe it was shame. Fear of what other people might think of him if they knew. He would no longer be Sam Wilson: All Around Nice Guy, Master Breakfast Chef, studying to become a veterans counsellor, always says thank you to the driver when he exists a bus; no, he’d simply be Sam Wilson: That Crazy Guy, and he didn’t want that being the only thing people saw him as.
His reluctance to acknowledge his past struggles could also have had something to do with his own skewed idea of recovery at the time. He'd gotten it into his head that the goal was to be able to go back to the life you had before, that success was dictated by how much of your 'old' self you'd managed to reacquire, and if there was any part of you that was still affected by your trauma, then you were a failure.
It took a long time and a lot of hard work, but Sam eventually came to recognise how unrealistic and frankly quite damaging that type of thinking was. He slowly learned how to reconcile all the different parts of himself, including those jagged, painful ones he’d once been so desperate to bury, acknowledging their impact while not allowing them to be the only thing that defined him. Instead of viewing his past as something awful that would always be weighing him down, he now sees it as more of a flexible tether – something he is forever bound to, that has provided his roots, but that does not necessarily prevent him from continuing to grow.
He wonders if this is something that Bucky could come to learn to do, instead of going for the scorched ground tactic of burning down everything you leave behind. He realises that Bucky’s trauma differs greatly from his own, that it is likely tangled much more inextricably into his sense of self and self-worth, so it’s understandable that Bucky would want to try and eliminate it from his life completely, but Sam just can’t shake the feeling that that’s not something that is going to work out so well in the long term.
Still, he’s determined to do what he can in the short term.
when do we leave? he texts Steve.
This time, there’s no quick reply. This isn’t unusual coming from Steve, so Sam doesn’t take it personally, but then his phone rings forty five minutes later and he knows shit is probably about to get pretty real if it’s an issue that can’t be resolved in 140 characters or less.
“Hey Cap,” Sam says, trying to mask his trepidation with an amiable tone, “What’s up?”
Sam can practically hear Steve squirming on the other end of the line when he says, “Well, uh, here’s the thing... I think... I was thinking... Maybe it might be best if, um, if it’s just me and Bucky on this one.”
“...Oh.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help,” Steve rushes to say, “Because I do. You’ve been absolutely invaluable these past few weeks, from keeping me sane to, oh, I don’t know, saving the world. But this whole thing with Buck, it’s just so personal, you know? Plus, you’ve gone your own life here, I wouldn’t want to—”
“Is it because Bucky doesn’t want me to come?” Sam asks bluntly. It comes out sounding a bit harsher than he’d intended, but he’s just so fucking exhausted from dancing so precariously around the issue that quite frankly he’d almost rather topple headfirst into it.
There’s a bit of a stunned silence before Steve stammers, “No! Well, I mean, uh, not... not exactly...”
“He came to my place yesterday,” Sam hears himself say before he can stop himself, and before he’s figured out how he’s going to follow up, which could end up being a problem.
“Oh?” Steve sounds puzzled but not surprised.
“Yeah. He wanted to... talk.”
“Great! I mean, that– that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s more like he came to tell me to stop trying to get him to talk,” Sam says glumly.
There’s a brief pause, then Steve says, “That could be a good thing too, though, right? He doesn’t want to talk because he doesn’t need to.”
“I– I’m not sure that’s the case...”
“Look, I know you’re just trying to help,” Steve says earnestly, “Because that’s the kind of person you are – the kind of person I wish there were more of – you see someone in pain and your instinct is to do what you can to alleviate it.”
Sam feels an odd heat rise to his cheeks for reasons that he can’t quite explain. This isn’t the first time Steve has said kind things about him, and while he doesn’t think the novelty of being told you’re a good guy by Captain America himself will ever wear off, he’s not sure why this is affecting him more deeply than usual right now. He supposes it could very well be because he’s been feeling extra fragile lately, and after that disastrous encounter with Bucky yesterday night and all the negative emotions that it had triggered in Sam, Sam is desperate to be reassured that he isn’t a terrible person for not having been able to handle the situation.
“But what I’m thinking,” Steve continues, “– And don’t take this the wrong way – but I’m thinking maybe right now you’re seeing pain where there isn't any. Because that’s what you’re used to seeing, hell, it’s your job to look out for it, plus I know it seems impossible that anyone could survive going through what Bucky went through. This is probably true of the average person. But Bucky’s not your average person. And I don’t mean just because of the serum.”
“Yeah, well, it’s pretty obvious that the serum doesn’t exactly guarantee a sound mind considering it runs through your veins, too,” Sam points out – fondly, not maliciously, “And yet that still didn’t stop you from wanting to crash a plane into a large body of water on two separate occasions.”
“Hmph, I suppose you have a point,” Steve concedes, but with a good-natured chuckle, the kind that comes after you’ve made it out alive from something you had been quite certain would kill you, and you’ve put enough distance between you and the memory to be able to look back at it and laugh in the face of everything that had tried to bring you down but couldn’t.
It’s a rare kind of laughter, and the kind that Sam treasures the most. This is perhaps the very first time he’s ever heard it coming from Steve, and he can’t bear the thought of having to take that away from him, but at the same time, the longer Steve is allowed to buy into this fantasy, the more devastating the truth will be when he finally figures it out.
And Sam has decided that by now it’s definitely a matter of when, not if. He simply can’t keep this from him any longer, even though he has absolutely no fucking idea how he’s going to talk about it.
“I know you’re worried about him,” Steve says softly after a moment. “And it really means a lot to me that you care so much, even after everything he's done. And I’m not saying that I don’t worry about him either, but... I don’t know, I guess I’m just trying not to look the gift horse in the mouth, you know?”
“He may seem okay on the outside, Steve, but he’s not,” Sam tells him. “You of all people should know what that’s like.”
It’s a low blow and they both know it.
“I don’t know what point you’re trying to make,” Steve says, annoyance and frustration finally beginning to seep into his tone. “I know you’re the expert— ” there’s sarcastic venom in the word, and Sam thinks, Yeah, I deserved that one, “—but he’s my best friend. I know him in ways that no certificate or degree or special training could ever teach someone.”
At the mention of the words best friend, Sam’s mind flickers, instinctively, involuntarily, to Riley, and not for the first time he wonders what things might have been like if they had both come home. On the more selfish side of things, Sam wonders if his transition back into the normal world could have been any easier had Riley survived. Sure, he would probably still have more issues than TIME magazine, but at least survivor’s guilt wouldn’t have been one of them.
In the beginning, Sam’s thoughts on having been the one to survive operated on the polar opposite ends of a spectrum. At the top of the scale was how he wished he’d gotten hit so that Riley could have gone on to live the healthy, fulfilling life that he deserved. Down on the other end was a more selfish, morbid desire - not so much survivor’s guilt as survivor’s regret: Sam wished he’d been the one to fall because, right now, he didn’t find much use in being alive.
He hates to admit it, but during some of his worst lows, right after he’d returned home, Sam often used to think that Riley had been the luckier of the two of them.
Riley got a hero’s send-off in a flag-draped coffin, punctuated by a three volley salute and framed by fighter jets performing a missing man formation in the sky above.
Meanwhile, Sam got more graves to visit on Veterans Day, shitty financial and medical support, a total lack of employment opportunities, and miles of red tape to wade through in order to obtain disability compensation.
Another factor contributing to Sam’s sometime-belief that Riley got the better end of the deal was the knowledge that at least Riley was spared the hell of trying to rejoin the normal world after serving. Then again, Sam knows that this is probably mostly him projecting, because who’s to say that Riley would have had as tough a time as Sam did? (And who knows, maybe if Riley had made it back, Sam wouldn’t have had as tough a time either. They might have both turned out okay.)
Sam likes to think that Riley would have been fine coming back home. That he would have re-adapted well to civilian life, found happiness in the simplest of pleasures, maybe start a family or pursue his passion for painting.
But of course, Sam will never know.
It’s the could have been’s that are the most cruel of any scenario.
“I’m sorry,” Sam tells Steve quietly. “That was a shitty thing for me to say. It’s just... I’m worried you’re only seeing what you want to see, you know?”
“I... No, I don’t know...? You’ve seen him, too, Sam. We’ve seen the same things.” There’s a loaded silence on the other end of the line, then Steve says slowly, “Unless... you’ve seen something that I haven’t.”
Sam winces, cursing himself in his head. Too much. He’s said too much. And yet, at the same time, not nearly enough.
“He was... different... when he came over,” Sam says cautiously. “Tense. Jumpy. ...Overdefensive.”
“Of course he’s gonna have some off days,” Steve points out, but again, there’s a beat before something else seems to occur to him. “Why did he go see you anyway?”
There is the faintest trace of betrayal in Steve’s voice, which Sam doesn’t blame him for. Of course it’s got to sting when your closest friend has seemingly turned to a near-stranger for help over you. Sam understands this, though, and he thinks Steve does, too, even if he doesn’t realise it at this particular moment.
It’s about the protection afforded by that expanse of impersonal distance, the security of knowing that you’re not letting someone down in the same crushing way that you would be if you were to confide in someone who cared more deeply about you.
(Of course, Steve kind of takes this concept to the extreme in that he seems to regard the entire world as someone he does not want to let down, hence his tendency to internalise the shit out of everything he feels.)
“There are some things that are harder to talk about with the people closest to you,” Sam explains. “He’ll open up to you when he’s ready.”
FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-12 08:37 am (UTC)(link)There is perhaps a third option of Steve somehow discovering material similar to what Sam had found in Boston, but Sam has a feeling that Bucky is going to move hell and high water to make sure he’s the first one to get his hands on any possible evidence.
Which brings them full circle back to the matter of Bucky not wanting Sam to come along.
Truth be told, Sam isn’t exactly clamouring to play third wheel, either. A third wheel with a tenuous-at-best relationship with one of the wheels and a screamingly terrible secret he’s keeping from the other.
Quite frankly, Sam is terrified of the prospect of living in close quarters with the two of them throughout what will undoubtedly be some rather hairy encounters and disturbing discoveries.
Even more frightening, though, is the thought of Steve and Bucky out there trying to navigate these perilous waters alone, oblivious and blind to the horrors that surround them. On one side, a six-headed sea monster, on the other, a voracious whirlpool. The only way out is through. Staying stationary is not an option, not if you hope to make it out with at least a fraction of yourself still in tact.
“Did Bucky specifically tell you why he didn’t want me to come?” Sam asks.
There’s an uncomfortable hesitation on the other side of the line before Steve says, “He says you keep – and these are his words, not mine, but I wouldn’t take them personally either way – um, he says you keep trying to... fix him.”
Sam tries his best not to feel mildly affronted at the crude and simplified interpretation of what he had been trying to accomplish with Bucky. He’d hoped that he’d spoken to Bucky in a way that didn’t make it sound like Sam thought there was something wrong with him, but considering how skewed Bucky’s self-perception is, he likely read any expressed negative emotion as directed towards him, not the circumstances, and any attempts to help were construed as either flagrantly unnecessary meddling or flat-out manipulation.
“I’d hardly say that’s what I was doing,” Sam sniffs, and it’s not even a lie. Barely anything he’d said to Bucky that night could have been considered ‘helpful,’ and while Sam had been fully intending to give Bucky a list of names and numbers of counsellors and support groups, the man had thundered out of the house before Sam even had the chance to write any of them down.
He has them now, though.
All very discreet, just names, numbers and addresses, with no mention of the areas they specialise in.
“I do have something I’d like to pass on to Bucky,” Sam says after a moment.
“What is it?”
“Just, you know... Some places he could look into.”
“Sam, I’m not sure that’s really necess—”
“He doesn’t have to do anything right away,” Sam interrupts. “But I still think it would be a good idea to at least have these resources at hand.”
Steve thinks about this for a moment before replying, “Okay, yeah, you’re probably right. You wanna message them to me or something and I can pass them on to him?”
“Actually, if it’s okay, I’d like to give them to Bucky directly.”
“Oh, okay. Yeah. Sure. Of course. You could, um, come by our place any time.”
‘Our’ place, Sam registers vaguely. Their place. Steve’s and Bucky’s place. Not even a week back and apparently they’ve already reconnected enough for Steve to have started thinking of them as a unit.
Sam feels even more third wheel-y than ever.
And yet he still isn’t quite comfortable with the thought of Steve and Bucky going off someplace without him.
He’s not so naive that he can’t recognise how ridiculous that is, though. As if he alone could keep anything disastrous from happening. If anything, Sam being there would only be adding fuel to the fire in terms of sending Bucky of the rails.
Then again, maybe that’s what needs to happen.
Sam is pretty sure that the only way the truth is going to come out without his direct involvement is if Bucky reaches a breaking point and can no longer maintain the meticulously crafted act he’s been putting on for Steve ever since he came back. Maybe, even if Sam wasn’t necessarily pushing Bucky to open up, his mere presence would be enough to put pressure on Bucky to come clean. He hates himself for even so much as entertaining this as a possibility, but he’s desperate and worried and time is running out.
“Hey, is Bucky around right now?” Sam asks suddenly. “It might be too awkward if I came by; maybe I could just talk to him now?”
“Um, yeah, just a sec, I’ll get him.”
There’s a rustling sound, some muffled, indistinguishable words, then a breath and Bucky’s very quiet voice saying, “What do you want?”
Sam’s throat constricts. What would have been but a simple introductory statement a few days ago is now a painful reminder of everything that Bucky has been through - of course Bucky would assume Sam is only talking to him because he wants something from him.
“Just want to talk,” Sam says.
Steve must still be within hearing distance because instead of the sarcastic jab at modern psychology that Sam had been expecting, Bucky just says, “About what?”
“Why don’t you want me to come with you and Steve?”
“Are you kidding me?” Bucky says incredulously. There’s no trace of docility left in his tone and for probably the hundredth time now, Sam is again struck by just how rapid and unpredictable this ever-changing game of charades is. “I thought it was pretty obvious.”
“What if we make a little compromise?” Sam suggests, realising only after he hears Bucky’s sudden shaky intake of breath that the term probably has very different connotations for him, and Sam could punch himself in the face for being that careless with his words.
“I mean,” he says swiftly, “Steve told me that you didn’t quite appreciate my inner therapist making an admittedly uncouth appearance yesterday night, and I get it; I wouldn’t want to be stuck on a road trip with someone who I knew was gonna psychoanalyse everything I did or said either. So how about this: how would you feel if I came along with you and Steve, but for purely tactical reasons? Backup support, a lookout, someone to go on coffee runs, an extra driver, whatever. I’ll do anything. But I’d just be there for the mission. Meaning I wouldn’t try to talk about anything with you unless you explicitly say there’s something you want to discuss.”
The ensuing silence on the other end of the line stretches on for long enough that Sam thinks he’s been disconnected so he tentatively says, “Bucky?”
“Sorry,” Bucky says, voice thick with confusion. “I... I guess I just don’t really get what kind of a bargain this is if you’re not even getting anything out of it.”
Sam frowns. If anything, he’s the one getting the better end of the deal here, which is why he hadn’t allowed himself to be too optimistic about his chances. Surely Bucky would be dissatisfied with having drawn the short straw, But now here he is saying he doesn’t understand the bargain because he thinks Sam is the one not benefiting from it?
That’s when the explanation hits him like a bag of bricks: Bucky thinks Sam isn’t getting anything out of this because no part of the deal involves Bucky providing him with sexual favours.
Sam damn near has to bite his tongue to keep from going off on another disorganised rant about how Bucky deserves more than to treat his body as mere bargaining chips or cheap currency, but he remembers what he’d just said literally five seconds ago about how he won’t try to pull any of his counsellor’s cards on Bucky, and if Bucky is going to trust him, then Sam is going to have to make damn sure he keeps his word right off the bat.
“I am benefiting from this,” he explains patiently. “You allowing me to accompany you and Steve is how I benefit from this.”
“That’s it?” Bucky asks dubiously.
“That’s it.”
“And... and what I get out of it is that you don’t... talk...? To anyone?”
It’s so obvious who Bucky is referring to when he said anyone that he might damn well just have said Steve.
“We’re in this together, Bucky,” Sam says, judiciously avoiding answering Bucky’s question directly. “I just want to be able to keep Steve safe.”
It must have been the right thing to say, though, because there’s a tiny tinkle of surprisingly pleasant laughter from Bucky when he agrees, “That makes two of us.”
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-12 12:55 pm (UTC)(link)Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-19 09:55 pm (UTC)(link)aaah thank you so much! oh god writing/reading this from bucky's POV would be devastating x10000
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-12 04:06 pm (UTC)(link)Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-19 09:57 pm (UTC)(link)thank you so much! i think a part of steve's obliviousness here is downright denial but yeah it's pretty frustrating lol
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-12 06:57 pm (UTC)(link)one thing i've started wondering about is like - how exactly does bucky see his relationship with steve? what's going through his head there? presumably he remembers their past relationship, knows who steve is, etc but - well, considering all the masks we've seen him don in such a short span of time, the misreading of sam's "expectations" of him and that power dynamic, the frantic attempts to hide the truth from steve, and his considerable success in convincing steve that he's okay despite the fact that he's obviously not - idk, i'm so curious about what their interactions are like, what's going through bucky's head, what's at the core of all this for him, and i actually really love that you've kept that under wraps from us and kept us guessing.
it seems like bucky is really clinging hard to steve being a safe space and that steve knowing certain details of his abuse would jeopardize that - but then again, bucky's sense of a safe space is incredibly distorted, all things considered.
anyway, i'm very excited to watch this all devolve into inevitable disaster!
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-19 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)thanks! ngl i haven't really figured out 100% what is going on through bucky's head during this whole thing. it probably fluctuates, but what you said about bucky desperately trying to preserve steve as a safe space has a lot to do with it.
i'm very excited to watch this all devolve into inevitable disaster! - #littlefanfictionthings
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-12 09:53 pm (UTC)(link)Bless Sam for having a list of trauma counselors at hand, even though there is absolutely 0% chance of Bucky ever calling one. He may feel like a third wheel, but he's the third wheel on a tricycle; absolutely fuckin' necessary.
Sam is becoming an expert in reading between Bucky's lines -- "what do you want" is no longer such a simple statement; "what do you get out of it" = what the hell is in for this for you if I'm not getting you off? Even though he accidentally terrifies Bucky by suggesting a compromise -- which must have felt like the hammer coming down after how Bucky felt Sam had been fucking around with him, and Bucky must be EVEN MORE confused now -- by the end of this he's going to understand who Bucky currently is better than Steve, if that's not already true. But finally, I appreciate that they connect about wanting to protect Steve. I think there's hope here... but I am also looking forward to everything falling apart.
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-12 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-19 10:02 pm (UTC)(link)i'm so glad you like it so far :D
Steve finally getting something good and locking down on it too hard to see it for more complicated than it appears to be - that's a great way of putting it ;~;
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-14 02:33 pm (UTC)(link)Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5b/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-19 10:07 pm (UTC)(link)lol this is very true tbh
but he just wants to help :(((
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5a/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-12 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)I really like this exploration of Sam's own trauma, and that you write him as relating to Bucky not just as a concerned outsider, but from the perspective of someone who has already walked the hard road of healing. He can use his own experiences to try to understand Bucky, even while not acknowledging that their trauma is very different. Also, one thing I kept thinking during this part was "Sam deserves better than this." SO MUCH STRESS FOR POOR SAM. It makes so much sense for Bucky to cut him out of the road trip, but I was still surprised, and then I was offended on Sam's behalf when Steve went along with it, even though that of course he would. He'd do anything to make Bucky more comfortable. But it's hard to see Steve getting irritated with Sam when STEVE IS WRONG. Anyway, I enjoyed Sam struggling to be as honest as possible with Steve about what he'd seen that Steve hadn't, while also not betraying Bucky's secrets. He was tense. Jumpy! Yes, he tried to jump your bones!
I wonder if Steve is gonna have to look more closely at Bucky's behavior now. He needs Bucky to be okay, but Sam has as good as told him that Bucky's revealed something to him that he hasn't to Steve, and that he's also shown a more wounded face to Sam. Steve can't possibly guess at the true depth of the damage Bucky's revealed, but he's still got to realize there's an unexplored thread here -- so what will win the day, his need for Bucky to be fine, or his instinct that he's missing something? Will he drop the thread or not? Or will he feel such an instinct at all?
By the way, oh my god, his "Bucky's not your average person" speech HURTS, because I'm just imagining Bucky's desperation not to let Steve know he's average after all; what a blow it would be to Bucky, to disillusion Steve about himself, and to wound Steve by being wounded, and to lose his safe space, all in one reveal. There are a lot of things that could be going on Bucky's headspace that give rise to his need for Steve to not find out: he's protecting Steve from trauma; he feels that if Steve believes the "normal Bucky Barnes" mask, then it'll be true; he feels that if Steve doesn't believe the mask, and sees what's underneath, he won't think so highly of Bucky anymore; Bucky thinks his purpose now is to be used, but he needs Steve not to know that, because if Steve wanted to use him too... etc. I think it's very effective that you leave us to speculate about what exactly is going on in his brain; there are a thousand possibilities, but ultimately we're just as lost as Sam is.
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5a/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-19 10:16 pm (UTC)(link)BLESS YOU OP you always leave the most wonderful detailed insightful comments!!
ngl, making people mad at oblivious steve is kind of my jam. but yeah i think steve is going to be a bit more attentive from here on out, even if he probably won't ever figure out the whole truth on his own.
and! bucky! tbh i haven't quite decided exactly what bucky is thinking throughout all of this, but everything you described here fits really well. in my head i have this idea that bucky objectively realises that steve is someone who won't hurt him - possibly the only one - and steve is also the one person who knows bucky (though what you said in your other comment, about how sam probably knows bucky better at this point, or at least more intimately, is heartbreakingly true) so bucky emulates that glorified idea of himself that steve has in hopes of actually being able to become that person eventually. if that makes any sense lol.
Re: FILL: between scylla and charybdis [5a/?]
(Anonymous) 2015-04-20 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)I love Steve but I also want to settle my face into my hands and cry, so there's that! Good job, your jam is going well.
That makes complete sense. It resonates a lot with me; I really understand the doublethink where you feel yourself to be one type of person, a flawed person, but when someone else sees you as better, well, wearing that mask, even knowing it's a mask, it can feel real. With Bucky this would all be hugely exacerbated by, oh, I don't know, severe trauma, how he's reeling from the destruction and reclamation of his identity, the fact that Steve is the only person from his pre-WS life who's even around... of course he'd want to focus on acting like the put-together person Steve thinks he is, so he doesn't have to pay attention to how fucked he's gotta feel underneath. And of course he'd think he just has to fake it until it's real again. The characterization rings very true.