hydratrashmeme | Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Holy shitballs, look at us go. Welcome to Captain America fandom's resident wretched hive of scum and villainy: ROUND THREE. AKA Bad Guys Do Dirtybadwrong Things To Your Faves, 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.

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Round 3 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 4.

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I can't help thinking about the fact that Steve painting trash cans was for Bucky, too, so Bucky thinks that Steve's gone out and did something for himself, when in fact that's not true....

This fic is, and continues to be, amazing.

I'm glad someone rec'ed this. It's wrecked me, but in a good way.
I love the way James is struggling with the concept that he might be a person and have the right to consent or deny sex. I really, really look forward to reading how this will all play out!

This hurts so much, omfg. James' life is a train wreck, and here I am, rubbernecking the HELL out of it.

The worst, the very worst and most awful part is when he DOES ask for something he wants, and Steve assumes it's for his own benefit and rejects him. ;A;

Bravo. *showers you with dusty broken bottles and used-up matchbooks*

bucky rubbing the waffle on his face was really great and i'm not sure why

Warnings for a bit of nasty antisemitism/pro-Nazism, when Benny starts talking about the war (also, have I totally failed to give any indication of when this story is taking place? Well, it's taking place not too long before Pearl Harbor, so WWII is happening but America hasn't joined up yet).

“We haven’t gone out in a while,” Steve said out of the blue a week later. Bucky’d just got in the door, and all he wanted to do was face-plant into his bed and pretend he didn’t have to be at work again on Monday.

“I haven’t been feeling like it,” Bucky said. Steve arched one disbelieving eyebrow at him from his place on the couch.

“You love dancing, Buck.” His hands stilled around the pencil he was sketching with. “You’ve hardly done anything but work and sleep in weeks. If you’re trying to save up money to move out before I get sick again, you can say so.” Steve’s voice is light, but he can’t completely hide the nervous tremor under the words, not to his best friend who’s known him since they were both knee-high to a grasshopper. Bucky cringed.

“No!” he said, too quickly. Steve’s eyes fell, and Bucky panicked. He couldn’t tell Steve he’d been going to work so early every day to get there before Benny, and leaving so late to make sure Benny was gone first and couldn’t invite himself over again. He had promised himself Steve would never know about his weakness, how he’d just sat there and – and allowed it to happen. “I mean,” he said, backtracking desperately, “I was worried that I was spendin’ too much money! But you’re right, it’s been a while. Let’s go out this Saturday, yeah?”

That would also give him an excuse to avoid Benny over the weekend. Couldn’t exactly go out dancing with his boyfriend, after all.

That was the end of the discussion, till Saturday afternoon. Steve came home from yet another weekend shift (proving yet again what a hypocritical little punk he was, complaining about Bucky working too much when he practically lived at that damn grocery store). “I ran into Benny at the store today,” Steve said, stepping through their door, and Bucky knew he wasn’t going to like whatever came next. Sure enough, “You didn’t tell me you’d already invited him out with us.” Bucky’s breath caught in his lungs.

“What?” he said, intelligently.

“I mentioned our plans and he said he already knew and was gonna meet us there.” Steve hung up his coat, turned away from Bucky and thus unable to see the shade of white he’d just turned. “You coulda told me you invited him, Bucky. I swear, I really don’t mind him being around. It’s good for you to have someone steady. As long as he makes you happy, I’m happy for you.” A smile forced its way onto Bucky’s face as Steve looked at him, determination all over his dumb, beautiful face.

“Right,” he said. “He does make me happy.” There were probably too many teeth in his grin and his eyes felt wild. As soon as Steve turned away to grab his drawing supplies and collapse on the couch, Bucky’s face slumped into a frown.

Steve clearly had been waiting to draw something his entire shift. All of his attention shifted to the scrap of paper in his hands, flattened against the wood board he used for drawing on the couch. The news that Benny would be joining them clearly hadn’t affected Steve the way it was still affecting Bucky.

“Um,” Bucky said. Steve didn’t look up, though Bucky couldn’t tell if that was because Steve was too preoccupied, or because Bucky had barely managed sound around the lump of glass in his throat. Either way, Bucky couldn’t make himself speak again. He stood dumbly next to the bedroom doorway for several moments, before turning and retreating back to bed.

Steve woke him in time for dinner before dancing. There was already a pot on the stove, boiling what food they had into a stew that Bucky barely tasted. “Are you getting sick again?” Steve asked. He was staring at Bucky and his half-full bowl.

Bucky forced a smile onto his face. “Just nervous,” he said, not entirely lying. “Are you sure it’s a good idea for us to go out? Usually we’d have girls with us, but this time, well….”

Steve reached out a hand to Bucky’s shoulder – an act made easier than usual by the fact that Bucky was still sitting, while Steve stood next to him, already having gotten up and finished washing his own bowl. “We’ll be fine, Bucky,” he said, shoulders squared up in anticipation of any fights. “We’ll hardly be the only guys ever to go out without dames on our arms.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, wilting under the weight of Steve’s hand. “You’re right.”

They walked into the bar an hour later, to see Benny already at the bar, leaning back against it with a smirk as he watched the dancers on the floor. Steve made his way over immediately, Bucky trailing after. They were greeted with a grin and two of the cheapest beer on tap.

“I was about to start worrying you fellas weren’t gonna show up,” Benny said, though his smile over Steve’s shoulder at Bucky said he had thought nothing of the sort.

Ignoring the fact that Benny had invited himself along on a lie, Bucky bristled in Steve’s defense. “What,” he said, “you think we’d tell you to meet us somewhere and then not show? We ain’t jerks; we wouldn’t do that.”

Steve’s smile tilted down, but he still tried to make up for Bucky’s attitude by elbowing him and making a joke. “Well, Bucky’s kind of a jerk, but he’s a good guy when it matters.”

Bucky’s face is gonna freeze like that with all the fake smiling he’s been doing lately.

Luckily, Steve was distracted about five seconds later by a scuffle on the other side of the bar. Bucky watched with a fatalistic sigh as Steve marched all five foot six of himself over to the arguing couple and blurted out, “The lady said she’s not interested in a dance. Said it loud enough I could hear it clear across the bar even half deaf, so I don’t know if you’re just stupid, but maybe you should leave her alone.”

It was almost comical how the guy looked up before noticing Steve, who barely reached his shoulder. Almost. Bucky scowled, set his shoulders, and followed his idiot friend as a sneer broke out on the other guy’s face.

“Maybe you should mind your own business,” the guy said as Bucky came up to loom as best he could behind Steve.

“Maybe you should piss off,” Bucky growled. He wasn’t huge by any means, but he was big enough to make the guy think twice before throwing a punch. If the guy did keep going, he’d find out that just because Bucky hadn’t been to the gym to practice his boxing in a while didn’t mean that he’d forgotten much.

Luckily, the guy was a coward. Even when one of the people he was outnumbered by was Steve, it was enough to make him slide off the bar stool and stalk off. Bucky didn’t miss the mumbled, “fuckin’ queers,” but he was thankfully on Steve’s bad side and Steve was distracted by the dame anyways.

The dame who, for once, wasn’t ignoring Steve to fawn all over Bucky. Steve had a shy smile on his face that Bucky had last seen when his little sister Alice brought Steve a flower (something Bucky still relentlessly teased her about whenever he had a chance). The woman smiled at Steve, and as Bucky watched in bewildered silence, she asked him to dance. Steve practically fell over himself in his haste to lead her out onto the dance floor, and Bucky had to look away. Steve couldn’t dance for shit, but the dame was just laughing with him and going along with it.

Bucky startled when Benny spoke from right next to him. “If a girl like that’ll dance with Rogers, you probably shoulda let the other guy straighten her out. No way a dame who looks like her’d dance with Rogers unless she ain’t right in the head.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Bucky bit out, turning to the bar so he could avoid looking at either Steve or Benny. The sour taste in his mouth said he knew exactly what Benny was insinuating, but he hoped Benny wouldn’t come right out and say it in the middle of a crowded bar.

He was right. Benny just chuckled deep in his throat and slapped a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “You know exactly what,” he said, taking the man’s vacated bar stool. Bucky rubbed at the place where Benny’s had had been as he took the lady’s seat. He wasn’t brave like Steve. He could get Steve out of fights, but he couldn’t start them, especially not in public like this. Instead, he swallowed down his bile and ordered a drink.

Two glasses of whiskey later, Steve and the pretty dame were still bumbling about the dance floor, and Benny had started up a conversation with the man next to him about the war in Europe.

“We should be worrying about our own country,” the stranger was saying. “Let Europe tear itself apart without throwing our boys away to die in another fight that’s not ours.”

Benny shook his head, fingers loose around an empty glass. “I dunno,” he said, leaning forward, “We gotta do something, yeah. Do you know how many Jews are trying to invade us right now? Think they can just run away from their own country and take all’a our homes and jobs and money, and in return we’ll skip right over to Europe and die for ‘em. Personally, I wouldn’t mind joining up on the German side’a things. Show the Jews they ain’t gonna take over America just cause Germany wised up about ‘em.”

The stranger hummed in agreement as Bucky shrank down in his seat. He needed to go visit his ma and sisters soon, make sure they were doing ok. If America tip towards Germany’s side of things, his family was gonna be in danger. Listening to Benny and the stranger keep talking, Bucky admitted that they might already be in danger. His stomach churned, and he downed another glass of whiskey while his eyes sought out Steve. Steve was in trouble every day of his life.

In spite of the rising sentiment against people like Bucky’s family, a selfish part of him hoped that America stayed out of the war. If they went to war, Steve was gonna be first in line to sign up for getting himself blown up in Europe.

Bucky’s stool screeched as he stood. “I think me’n Steve are gonna head out,” he said to Benny’s back. Benny hardly glanced at him.

“Sure,” he said. Bucky dodged the arm Benny threw out to grab him under the guise of stumbling, and headed over to Steve and the dame.

“Sorry to cut in,” he said, not sorry at all, “but I was planning to head home, Steve. I wasn’t feeling too well, and I don’t think the whiskey and the dancing have agreed with me tonight.” It was a testament to how starry-eyed Steve got around pretty girls that he didn’t contest Bucky’s claim of having danced at all that night.

“Lucy, this is my roommate, Bucky,” he said instead, smiling stupidly at Lucy. Lucy smiled at him.

“I remember,” she said. “The other fella who helped chase Gary away. I really appreciated that.”

Steve beamed at her. Bucky wanted to punch her pretty face. “Anyway,” Bucky managed to get out, “you coming back too, Steve, or were you gonna stay here and dance some more?” He turned to Lucy and grinned with all his teeth. “Steve here doesn’t get too many ladies willing to dance with him. It was awful nice of you to let him step on your toes all night.”

Lucy giggled like Bucky was just teasing, missing the glare Steve shot him. “Oh, I didn’t mind at all!” she said. “Steve’s a real gentleman.” Her smile turned softer, and she added, “I should probably be getting home myself, though. It is awful late and I don’t want to keep your friend all to myself if you’re not feeling well. It was lovely to meet you both.”

Steve’s face did a series of complicated things while he tried to simultaneously glare at Bucky and smile at Lucy. “I’d, um, love to take you out sometime,” he said, ending up with his eyes fixed on his shoes. Really, how Bucky’s best pal was such a disaster with dames would always be a mystery to him (even if it was a mystery he was secretly glad for, in the shameful dark places of his own mind).

The smile dropped from Lucy’s face like butter off a hot knife. “Oh,” she said, looking between Steve and Bucky. “I thought, um.” She paused, rallied a smile fake enough to rival Bucky’s. “I had a lot of fun dancing,” she said instead. “But I’m not really available.” Her fingers twisted in her dress as Steve’s face fell.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, that’s alright. I had a very nice time dancing with you as well.” His disappointment was palpable, but his response was sincere. The two still parted awkwardly.

On the walk home, Bucky’s steps lightened considerably. Steve was so cut up about Lucy’s rejection that he hadn’t bothered to press when Bucky said Benny had already gone home. A small part of Bucky felt horribly guilty about his happiness, but he shoved that part down, threw his arm around Steve’s shoulders, and finally allowed himself a real smile.

Thank you!

Thanks! I hope you enjoy the next part too!

BUCKY NO

(op) OH. OMG. OMG??? I'm very very sorry I've been so absent (for a whole host of other reasons) because these last two chapters have been absolutely fucking phenomenal. My heart is in my throat and I low key want to cry and I'm loving every minute of it. I'm beyond floored with the depth you've given to these two in this story, how far they've come, how vivid and fleshed out they really feel, how wonderful and precarious it feels to occupy their world, all the richness and love and awfulness between them. Just. UGH. LOSS FOR WORDS. NEVER STOP. <3

So I somehow ended up with plot in my porn again.

----

"Abso-fucking-lutely not !" Tony waved with his hands exuberantly to add gravity to his words.

"He's basically on the team anyway,"Steve protested.

"No...no no no. Having him run a few covert missions is not the same as strapping a star on his chest and putting a big 'A' on his shoulder."

"He can be trusted," Steve said, trying to be very calm but clearly boiling on the inside.

"That is not the point. My God, do you people never look outside the window? Turn on the TV? He's an ex-assassin!"

"So am I," Natasha interrupted as she scraped her throat. Suddenly she felt all eyes on her. "Just saying," she added. It was the first time had spoken during this meeting and she was really not in the mood for this.

"That's different. And that was a PR disaster as it was."

"I'm a PR disaster," Wanda interjected. Natasha could see her looking at her with insecure eyes, as if looking for approval. Interesting, she thought. Had she sensed that Natasha was trying to steer the conversation? Clever girl.

Tony was trying to contain his frustration, and failing. "Oh great, what is this? The new Soviet block?"

Natasha was getting tired of this. She could think of better ways to spend her time. Besides, this meeting quite unfortunately coincided with the day Bucky had picked for a scene and she wanted to prepare for it. "Really, Tony? We're playing it like that? What are you - five?"

"Okaaay, maybe we should all calm down," Sam said.

"I believe this is a wise course of action," Vision agreed. "While I find Mr. Stark's tone..jarring, the concerns he raises are genuine.

"Finally, a voice of reason," Rhodey huffed out. He had not spoken much during the meeting, but his frustration seemed close to matching Tony's now.

"Not everything in life is decided by reason," Wanda said. Her eyes searched Vision's - a little too long - confirming something Natasha had suspected for a while now.

Tony made another irritated hand movement. "Yes, let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya while the assassin stabs us in the back."

"Oh, come on, Steve cried out.

"Perhaps that was not the most fortunate choice of words," Vision commented.

"Okay, I'm stopping this before it escalates," Sam said. "Let's all take 20 and vote on this when we get back."

Natasha sighed. No was this was going to end well. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If half the team was against this, and it would divide them - perhaps it was better to vote no.

It makes my trash heart so happy to see this continued :)

thank you!!! i just call it, "this has spun completely out of my control; what have i done"

thank you! :) i'm thrilled, as i live solely to drag visceral emotional reactions out of people like i'm hauling nameless, overwhelming fish out of the ocean

yeah, i'm really working on depicting steve here as being intensely, well, whatever the term is for "selfless but in kind of a petty, pointless way solely driven by the spite he feels toward himself."

thank you!

thank you! tbh my interests strongly include bucky compensating for decades of touch-starvation by seeking affection from inanimate objects

hello!!! thank you so much i am SO HAPPY that this is how you feel! that these are the ways that you feel!!! <3 i hope that you don't regret telling me to never stop once i maybe possibly accidentally write another 30,000 words instead of the 15,000ish i've planned for (i love "richness and love and awfulness" so much omg).

In two days, Bucky’s going to turn an imaginary, untouchable number of years. Steve is cross-legged on the living room floor, bent forward to use the laptop in front of him. He has one tab open for Binging local bakeries, one for Binging local florists, and three with image searches for different varieties of flower. Bucky loves Monet’s water lilies, but they don’t live in water, so he looks at tiger lilies, and at easter lilies, and—feeling gawky and dumb and young about it—roses.

Bucky enters the room through the window. Steve shouts, “Jesus fucking Christ, Bucky!” after he’s blindly thrown a couch cushion in a neat arc. Bucky catches it against his chest, hugs it to him. His cheeks are flushed, his hair coming out of the two buns twisted up high on his head. He’s wearing all black, like he planned this when he got dressed, how best to make the cat burglar joke land.

Steve says, “Why was that unlocked?” shuffling to make sure his body shields the computer screen from view.

“Wasn’t. That would be stupid. You think I’d leave it unlocked?”

“It’s not like the house was going to be empty at any point.”

Bucky shrugs. “Not necessarily, Steve. You could have gone anywhere. Australia. Texas.” He slinks over with exaggerated cartoon sneakiness, flattening himself to an invisible wall. He whispers, “I jimmied it. I’m pretty great at locks.”

Steve realizes he can just shut the laptop for now. “Yeah, I know that. You always were.”

Bucky gets on the floor and prowls like a cat to close the distance between them, all-fours and an arched spine. Then he flops down and puts his head on Steve’s thigh. Steve pats at his head.

Bucky says, “Hey, so an old crone had to wait two hours just to get on a bus.”

Steve starts to say, “Yeah, what’d she do that you’re calling her—” but Bucky speaks over him.

“Bus after bus came by, but they were full-up with passengers, and she couldn’t squeeze herself in as well. When she finally managed to clamber aboard, she wiped her forehead and exclaimed, ‘Finally, Glory to God!’ But the driver said, ‘Mother, you must not say that. You must say, ‘Glory to comrade Stalin!’” He squirms, and a hairclip digs into Steve’s leg.

The other visible clips are thick, oblong curves. A tortoiseshell pattern, catching the gold tones hidden in Bucky’s hair. Two clasp at the base of each bun. Steve thumbs at one’s smooth surface.

Bucky coughs into his elbow. “Anyway, so the woman said, ‘Excuse me, comrade. I’m just a backwards old woman. From now on, I’ll say what you told me to.’ Then after a while, she continued, ‘Excuse me, comrade, I am old and stupid. What shall I say if, God forbid, Stalin dies?’ ‘Well,’ the driver said, ‘then you may say, 'Glory to God!'’” He laughs in a series of small puffs, his chest bouncing. “That was my favorite, at one point.”

“It was?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why. Or when exactly. I remember knowing I shouldn’t tell anyone. I think that. Uh.”

He rolls so it’s his forehead digging into Steve’s thigh. Steve used to think that he could read Bucky’s feelings just fine from his voice or the set of his shoulders, or even the back of his neck. He could guess from a handwritten note what Bucky’s face had looked like when he wrote it. How could he possibly now?

But the shift in position has revealed the pale rivulet of skin where Bucky’s hair parts and heads up into the two buns. It’s crooked. Steve touches him there, and Bucky whines: one clear note.

He goes on, “It was fine—sometimes, I mean—for me to think things were funny. But I could never tell what made it fine or wrong. So I never acted like I did, but sometimes someone would say, ‘See the soldier thinks I’m funny.’ Or something like that. And I’d be terrified, but nothing’d happen. But someone told me that joke. Told me directly, when we were alone. So he couldn’t say, ‘See the soldier thinks I’m funny,’ and no one else could say, ‘See, the soldier doesn’t think you’re funny.’”

“But you think you thought it was funny?”

“I know I thought it was hilarious. But no one got to say I felt one way or the other. So I acted like I didn’t think anything. And for all anyone knew, I didn’t.” He drags himself forward so his head is more or less buried in Steve’s crotch. There’s something chaste about it. He says into the open space between Steve’s folded legs, “You tell me something now.”

“What am I telling you now?”

“Tell me something you haven’t before.” He flips onto his back, a vulnerable turtle. Bumps the back of his skull against Steve’s farther thigh. He looks like Steve should be cradling his body, clutching his entirety; he’s glowing and rough-hewn and damp around the eyes. “This goes both ways, okay? Tell me something important. That was important.”

The makeup beneath his right eye has grown faint over the course of the day, or maybe rubbed off in his squirming. Deep, sweet shadow; beautiful, difficult man.

“Sam said he’s coming by to drop off a gift for you later.”

“That’s important. But you know what I mean.”

“Mmm.” He cups one of the knobs of hair in his palm. Springy and soft. “You know that I was. Well. Really lonely. For a while. After I woke up.”

“Stands to reason.”

“And I tried not to be. But in a lot of ways, that was worse. I kinda think I should have let myself lie dormant.”

“Do you?”

No reaching his hand out to Sam. No cracking jokes with Natasha. No making small talk with any diner waitresses or grocery store cashiers. No touch at all that wasn't pure violence besides being squeezed body-to-body with others on the subway with everyone doing their best to pretend to be alone.

“No. God, sorry. I didn’t do anything wrong,, and nothing really bad happened.”

“Hey, stop plagiarizing my memoirs!”

Steve laughs, and brushes his hair off his forehead; it's been getting long.

“Fuck. It’s my turn now, and I’ll plagiarize what I like, asshole. It wasn’t anything bad. I don’t think. But I did, well, have sex with a few people. A woman who recognized me in a bar. Two SHIELD agents. Natasha tried to set me up with one of them once, uh, after, and it was hell keeping a straight face.” He shrugs. “Nothing bad. But I felt lonelier after. Every time.”

Bucky stares up at him with his damp eyes. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

“I should. I pushed you.”

“That’s not the point. Besides. I just told you some shit you didn’t ask about. But see? It ain’t exactly easy.”

“I haven’t been asking because I think it’s easy.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He shuts his eyes and turns onto his side, facing Steve, moving closer so he’s practically curled catlike around him. “You’re asking because you think it matters. You think so many things matter.”

The doorbell startles them both awake.

In Steve’s dream, he was about to buy a very small grapefruit. Bucky’s drooled a small very small puddle on his thigh. There’s only a very small amount of light in the living room now, the sun snuffed out. His throat is dry, and Bucky’s crouched next to him, still and ominous in his all-black. They wait.

Then Bucky whispers in his ear, “What are we waiting for here?”

Steve says, “Um,” and his phone starts buzzing from under the couch, in the pattern assigned to—“Sam, right.” He tries to get up, but Bucky shoves him down, and his teeth glint.

“It’s my birthday gift. I get the door.”

“Oh, perfect. I’ll keep sitting here in the dark.”

The open door lets in a punch of cold air. Sam says, “Why do I feel like I’m the one getting a surprise party?”

“Surprise!” Steve yells. Kind of yells. Says loudly.

Sam screams—quietly, not worrying the neighbors—and makes a series of choking noises. “You’ve surprised me,” he hisses out, “to death.”

Bucky says, “Wow, I can’t believe Steve hired me the world’s most melodramatic stripper.” Sam laughs, and then Bucky says, softer, “Hey,” and there’s a pause, and then Sam hissing in pain. Bucky tsks at him. “What the hell kind of ugly-ass tin men are you fighting out there? I hope you have all your tetanus shots.”

“Hey, run-of-the-mill supervillain. You don’t watch the news? It’s gotten a lot more attractive since I showed up.”

“That’s Steve’s gig. I like daytime TV.”

“What, like Ellen?”

“No, like soaps. I love soaps.”

“Well, that’s some info I could have used before getting your present. I hope you like it even if it doesn’t have a secret twin who’s also its grandma plotting to steal its liver or anything.”

Steve calls to them, “You can come in, you know! You’re letting the cold in.”

Appearing in the living room doorway as Bucky smacks the door shut, Sam says, “Stewart Graham Roberts, put on a sweater if you’re cold. And what, you guys’re out of candles?”

“Candles?” Steve snorts. “Come on, Buck and I are men of the future. We use lanterns.” But he stands, groaning at the stiffness in his knees that’ll be gone in a minute, and flicks on the lamp. “See? These nifty electric lanterns.”

Sam is resplendent. Steve laughs at himself for thinking that, but he is, as always. Something ineffably good in his eyes and the set of his shoulders. Even in the cuts and scratches Bucky must have been touching and worrying over in the doorway. One neat set of stitches on his cheek, a protruding scab above his eyebrow. He’s wearing a leather jacket that's too big, and sunglasses perched on the top of his head. Under his arm, he’s got a package wrapped in festive, multicolored paper, ready to be thrown away.

Bucky says, “The soaps have got a lot of amnesiacs in ’em. I’m learning a lot about how to be myself.”

Steve and Sam embrace, competing to hug the air out of each other, and Sam is so warm, and he asks over Steve’s shoulder, “Oh yeah? Like what?”

Maybe Steve can’t see Bucky, but he can tell that he’s grinning when he says, “Fake it all and your dreams will come true. Right, former Miss America 1942?”

Steve digs his chin into Sam’s shoulder, the dry stiff leather and sturdy muscle of him. Sam almost-giggles. Steve closes his eyes and mutters, “Open your gift or I’ll open your face,” and the hug ends.

Lounging on the floor, Bucky unwraps a Rubik’s cube, a package of bright hair elastics, and a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. He folds the wrapping paper, neat from how he slit through the tape with a metal finger. He touches each gift with the same finger, with the same kind of wonder he had in his eyes when he was ten and a rabbit came right up to him and Steve in the park like it had no fear.

Sam, sitting close to Bucky with his back against the couch, says, “It’s completely possible that I sent your friends postcards asking what you wanted.”

“Were they signed from their worst nightmares?”

“Y’know, somehow I didn’t see that going over so well. Normal, anonymous postcards from a normal, anonymous benefactor.”

Bucky looks up, and he’s smiling the smallest amount and his hair is in his eyes. He aims a soft punch to Sam’s arm.

“Yeah, Happy Birthday, man. You’re what, thirteen now?”

“Fifteen, Wilson. It’s like there’s no love.” He whaps Sam’s knee with the book. “You want a beer?”

“I gotta drive back. And you know I don’t drink if there aren’t any games involved.”

“It’s non-alcoholic. And it’s so sweet that you drove all this way. Steve, isn’t he just the cutest, most courteous gentleman?”

Steve says, “That’s right. There’s no competition.”

Sam glares at both of them. “Ugh. That’s to that comment and the non-alcoholic beer. Who’s responsible for that?”

Bucky points at Steve. Steve points at Bucky, who is, in fact responsible for it, because Steve didn’t know they had non-alcoholic beer in the house until this moment.

Sam says, “Uh-huh. Sure. You have coffee?”

Steve returns to the living room balancing three mugs of coffee and feeling proud of himself for it. Sam is staring at the Keebler elves painting from an inch away, like maybe the Da Vinci code is buried inside its clumsy brushstrokes.

Once Sam’s left, Bucky lies back down on the floor with his gifts and his wrapping paper. Steve stretches out on the couch and watches him. The bend in one of his knees. The curls escaping his buns. His hands toying with the Rubik’s cube like assembling a gun—But this is Bucky as he never got to see him, unused to any weapons besides his fists and the occasional baseball bat, clutching a gun for the first time, clumsy and his eyes bright, dark slashes as he learned how to work something new.

The Bucky he found in Italy held his gun close to his body with passionate familiarity, and treated it like his body too. The motions of disassembling, cleaning, assembling, shooting all came off as dull and instinctive as taking a piss. And unless they were keeping a low profile, he always whistled his way through both. Now, he hums.

Steve wants to tell him that he lied when he said he didn’t do anything wrong. That he’s never checked to make sure those two SHIELD agents weren’t Hydra. That he was maybe even more in bed with Hydra than he thought, and he doesn’t even have the decency to verify one way or the other. He can’t tell him that, because Bucky will say, “Fuck, I knew you thought I was disgusting for fucking someone in Hydra,” or maybe that won’t even bother him. Maybe he already finds himself disgusting, and he would think Steve was disgusting too, and that would be fair.

He’s divided on whether he should be mad at himself for the mere existence of the possibility that those people were Hydra; he should definitely be mad at himself for acting like he deserves to remember those encounters the same either way. And he is mad, but it’s woven in with everything else he can be mad at himself about. And he listens to Bucky humming, and the clicking of the cube.

He says, “Why Dorian Gray?”

Bucky tilts his head to look at him. “You know why.”

“What, feeling self-conscious about how old you’re getting?”

Bucky laughs. “Sure. Please. You know why. Come on, honey.”

Steve opens his mouth, closes it again, opens it and says, “Uh.”

Bucky frowns and squints at him. “Huh. All right. Yeah, it’s the immortality thing. I like to think about it. What it means for us.” He looks away. He hums more loudly. He’s got one side of the cube all red, one side all blue. Stewart Graham Roberts goes to put on a sweater.

This is th cutest and best!

Whee, I'd been hoping for an update. The end just tugged at my heartstrings again. Steve's unspoken guilt <3

I'm getting there...slooowly. Thank you for reading :)

This was so amazing, I should have been in bed an hour ago. Thank you so much!

In which people have sex they hate.

Extra warning for victim blaming. Continued in 7c because word count.
----

Natasha was feeling slightly annoyed later that day when was standing before her - naked except for the collar, arms folder behind his back, eyes cast down. It bothered her that she noticed how long his eyelashes were, that her eyes were drawn to the shapely muscles that ran from his chest to his belly. She disliked how much she found the curve of his mouth to be pleasing - especially as it was still curled into the ghost of a smile, one she would soon wipe away.

The tools she wore on her belt - a few dildos, a stun baton, a knife - should have made her feel more confident, but they felt like burdens now. In her mind she had imagined some sort of female Indiana Jones with sex toys, but in reality there was something sad about it.

She didn't want to be here, not now, not like this.

He shuffled his feet and did not look up, but she could tell he wanted to.

"I'm sorry if this is out of line, Mistress, but I know you were making a decision today..."

There it was. The thing she'd been hoping to avoid.

"And you wanted to know if we thought we had it in you to be an Avenger..."

He nodded almost shamefully.

She hated this, but she could use it to her advantage. Observe your surrounding. Assess the situation. Exploit weaknesses.

It was easy. Too easy.

She twisted her fingers in his hair and pulled his head back so she could see his face. He stood taller that her by quite a few inches, but with the look he gave her, he might as well have been 3 foot tall. She realized he was genuinely scared...and ashamed.

Natasha kicked the back of his knees and he buckled without resistance, landing on his knees at her feet. Her fingers never left his hair, and she could see him wince at it being pulled as he went down.

"Think you're good enough, James?" she asked him. He did not reply.

She backhanded him, hard. "I asked you a question."

"Yes," he hissed defiantly, looking up at her, bracing for another hit. "Yes I am." And honestly, she wanted to laugh. Tell him how he was doing a good job of not simply lying down and taking it. But she wasn't here for that.

"Think Hydra's whore is going to make a good addition to our team?"

"You know that's not what I am anymore." He looked up at her, genuinely angry, like he was going to pounce her. She hated to admit it to herself, but she found the danger of it exciting. All the little hairs on her body tingled, preparing for an attack that never came.

"Really? Could have fooled me."

She crouched down like a predator and put her hand on his half-erection. Only when she did she realized it felt like too much, too close, too forward. He was looking straight at her, like if it was a dare, and she could feel his ragged breath on her own lips.

"I amnot Hydra's," he spat, and she didn't miss the omission of the word whore.

"So why are you hard?"

She stared right back at him - calling his bluff, if that was what it was at all.

"Cause for better or for worse, I'm yours now...Na...Mistress." He said the title with disdain, and this was not something she had prepared for. She knew from the Max incident he didn't quite take this willingly, but she was only yet learning the rules of engagement.

"Mine? So if we'd run into your Hydra pals, you'd obey me over them?"

"Yes," he said simply, and that truly surprised her, because it did not sound like a lie.

"And if they'd pull off your pants and bent you over,, junior here wouldn't react?"

"I didn't...I didn't say that."

In this position, he could easily kiss or kill her - but he didn't seem to want to do the former,and she wasn't sure she could defend herself against the latter. After a few seconds he made a pained noise and lowered his gaze. Something about his surrender made her windpipe feel like it was being crushed, like she'd have preferred an attack over this.

"It's not my fault," he whispered pitifully, "I hate how my body betrays me."

Ah, she could work with that.

"Think it would make a difference to the enemy, if they'd capture you? That the'd care about your personal trauma?"

He shook his head.

And God, she knew it was unfair, she knew he couldn't help it - but, the humiliation was part of it, wasn't it? He looked so very defeated though, that she was doubting how far she was willing to go here.

She placed her hand under his chin, and forced him to look up at her again.

He was still hard under her touch. Her hand fisted his cock hard enough to bruise.

"You wanted to look, so look," she said.

She grabbed the zipper of her catsuit, revealing much - too much - of her breasts, leaving the garment open down to her bellybutton. He was looking in a way she'd describe as admiring - and he was still semi erect, but there was no reaction there, no change.

"You say you're mine, but you'd prefer any random cock over this." She felt his reaction to that in her hand immediately. And this was it, the thing that broke him. He was silent now, but his eyes started pooling with tears, and he stared at her in a way that slammed the feeling of guilt into her chest at full force.

He laid back down on his back, defeated, and placed his arm over his eyes to hide his tears. She decided to let him have that. Without her even needing to ask, he parted his legs, so she'd have access to whatever she wanted.

She pulled a latex glove from her pocket, and she could swear she could see a shiver running through him at the sound of it being pulled on. She wetted her first and middle finger in her own mouth, pushed apart his knees a little bit more before finding his hole. As she pushed in she was met with resistance - he was just as tight, if not tighter than last time. His body reacted to the intrusion, making him tighten around her even more.

"You weren't kidding about healing back up," she said.

He removed his arm from his face, but he deliberately looked away from her.

"Always fun at Hydra parties," he replied bitterly.

This...wasn't how it was meant to be. Everything was bleeding over already. That was Bucky talking, pure and unfiltered.

"What's your color?" she asked.

"Green. Bright green," she scoffed. "What, you really think two fingers inside me comes anywhere near awful in my experience? Just fuck me already." He sounded bashful, but he still wouldn't meet her eyes.

She curled her fingers up against his prostate, and he let out an unwilling moan, his body reacting the the physical sensation.

This was how it was supposed to go...but then, why were there alarm bells ringing in her head?

She pulled the fingers out, and took one dildo from her belt - the one she had fucked him with last time. She fastened it to the harness that was already secured to her body, adjusting the straps. The fabric of her catsuit felt safe between her skin and the contraption, and she was grateful for that small amount of privacy, even in this most intimate of moments.

Bucky - or James, she wasn't sure - did not have that luxury, being exposed to her mercilessly.

She slapped the inside of his thigh with a flat hand. "Spread wider."

He did without resistance, but she pushed the legs open more for good measure.

"That's a good slut,' she said. "I can see your hole now. Think I didn't see those scars before, James? I know how much cock has been in there. You can't hide from me."

A pitiful whimper escaped from his lips.

She climbed between his legs, positioning herself to fuck him. Placing an arm on each side of him, she was very aware that she was trapping him on the floor like this. The tip of the dildo found its way to his ass, and pressed against his sphincter, impatient to get in.

"I'm going to fuck you dry, James. What do you say about that?"

"A good slut like me can take it," he replied, but he still would not face her when she spoke.

She thrust in, but his body wouldn't let her enter easily,and she really had to force it in. He cried out at the initial penetration, but then she could see him biting into his flesh-and-blood hand, and he was silent as his tears finally fell.

When she was all the way up to the hilt, his eyes did flash up at her, wet and soul-piercing, and she almost thought he'd say something, but then he turned his head to the side again.

She recalled a time when she was milking a millionaire weapons dealer for info - quite literally, with her fingers poking his prostate - and how much he had whimpered : please darling, more darling, it's so good, harder...."

This was not like that at all. As she moved in and out of him, his body pinned under her, he looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. Even his gaze was distant, and she could only wonder where his thoughts went now. His body was still resisting and he was crying silent tears, looking more and more distressed with every trust. This really did feel like rape. Like it was not much different that what had been done to him before. But, maybe that was the point.

She could see he had started sucking on his thumb while she was fucking him open and she wondered if it was for comfort, or if he was really just imagining another cock there.

After maybe five minutes of fucking most resistance was gone. She realized this session might leave him with another scar or two, and it made her heart clench.

"I need...." he said after a few more minutes, and she stopped moving. "You need to hurt me a bit more. It won't work like this."

She had hoped it would not come to this, but she had come prepared. She pulled out of him, but stayed kneeling between his legs, his body spread open before her. She took the stun baton from her belt and she could see him flinch involuntarily. It was no secret they had tortured him with it. He had even said as much to Steve, though he had kept the sexual bits out.

Natasha turned the device on and the electricity whirred. She teased one of his nipples with it, and his whole body convulsed at the pain and the current. Then the second nipple - he was prepared for the feeling now, so he spasmed less, but he couldn't stop the involuntary reaction

She turned off the electricity and ran the baton along the hard shaft of his cock. He looked terrified now, knowing the inevitable outcome. When she pushed the button he screamed the current ran through his genitals, and he bit his hand hard enough to draw blood. Natasha turned the baton back off, and took another dildo from her belt. She pulled his hand away from his mouth, inspecting the damage. It didn't look too serious, but there was no need to have him leave marks.

"Here, bite on this," she said as she held the dildo in front of his mouth, and he took the whole toy .

She turned the baton back on, and his screams were muffled by the phallus in his mouth. She turned the electricity on and off a few times, repeating the process. She almost expected him to grow soft, but he only seemed more erect, precum leaking as his cock took the abuse. She moved the baton down to his balls and he retched against the dildo as she did so, as if he was going to throw up.

Then, finally, she turned it off, took her attention off his genitals and pressed the baton between his buttcheeks. His eyes flicked back to her, looking positively terrified, but he nodded briefly.

The baton went in with less resistance that her dildo had before - his hole fucked open and ready for penetration now. When she pushed the button this time, he wailed in pain, legs thrashing so she had to use her reflexes not to get kicked. She supposed that that was why some people went for the tying up thing - but for now, she was glad she could get information from his natural reactions.

Natasha switched it off again, just fucking him with it, in and out. There was more resistance again now, and she guessed that had been part of the point of using it on him: to make him tighter. Well, that and plain old sadism.

The baton had streaks of blood on it by now, but she had come to realize this was part of the thing for him - he was right where he needed to be.

She alternated between just fucking him with it, and turning on the electricity briefly. It was a dance of thrashing and composing himself again, of crying out and swallowing sobs, until she saw he was reaching exhaustion, even the pain drawing less reactions from him.

WShe tossed the baton aside, settled back between his legs and thrust back into him. When she did he reached for her face, almost on instinct. She braced for a slap, but it was merely a soft touch.

He was looking at her again now, and for a fraction of a second there was something she could not read in those eyes, until he seemed to realize what he was doing and his look turned to horror, his hand drawing away like her skin had burned him.

She fucked him for a few more minutes, her hand on his cock, masturbating him until he was right on the edge. He was looking away from her again, sucking on the dildo half-heartedly. It didn't take long now - he was hurting and spent, and she could feel him writhing under her.

"Hey, it's okay,"she said. "You can come now if you need to."

He did, almost instantly, and she wondered if she should have said that sooner. She was still learning.

Right after his orgasm she pulled out as fast as she could, remembering the lesson from the previous time.

He spit out the dildo, breathing in deeply a few times. She got up, loosened the straps of the contraption around her hips, and let it slide to the floor.

The bathrobe she had for him was already waiting, neatly folder by her before he had even stepped into the room. She offered it to him and he pulled it over himself, shielding his naked body from her eyes.

"I'll leave you to it. However long you'll need. "I'll be by the elevator if you need me."

She turned to leave, but she heard him scraping his throat.

"I would have had your back, you know," he whispered.

"What?" she asked, confused.

"If I'd have become an Avenger," he said. "I'd have had your back."

It damn well nearly broke her heart, and she made a mental note not to try and use real-life elements for scenes anymore.

"About that," she said, as she walked to where his clothes were folded, and stuck her hand into one of the pockets, pulling his phone out. "You should really learn to check your missed messages. It can be useful."

She took the phone back to him, and knelt down on the floor beside him, careful not to touch. He scrambled to sit up, still holding the bathrobe protectively against his body.

"Can I?" she asked, because she did not wish to violate his privacy more by going through his phone.

He nodded and she found the missed message, choosing the option to play it, holding it close to his ear, but far enough not to actually make physical contact. She could not make out the words, but she didn't need to. She had been with Steve when he had made the call.

Hey Buck, so I really wanted to tell you in person, but forgive me I was really excited to tell you. You made it. Vote was 4 to 3, so...congrats, Avenger. I'll ask Thor for whatever that stuff is we can get drunk on to celebrate, okay? You have a good day. And call me.

She could see the look of amazement on his face as it sank in what it meant - and she could see a whole different type of tears in his eyes - those of joy.

She couldn't help but smile widely. "Welcome to our band of misfits."

He looked like he was about to hyperventilate. "Four votes for," he said and she could see the realization form in his head. "Tony would have voted against me, and Rhodes would have followed his cue. Steve would vote for, as would Sam. Wanda would vote for or abstain, but no one abstained so...the swing vote was either Vision...or you." He looked up at her, searching her face for reactions. This was one thing she couldn't hide. She felt the smile on her own face widen. She was happy she could give him something good.

"It was you, then."

"Of course it was, silly."

His fingers dug into the fabric of the bathrobe.

"But you know what I am..."

"Yeah, I do. You're a valuable addition to this team, that's what you are. And oh..." She scrambled back up and headed for the curtains on the mirrors. She had hidden a box there before they had started.

"This is for you."

She put the box down before Bucky and he opened the lid, still looking at her with distrust.

Inside there was a uniform, similar to Steve's, but black at the bottom and blue at the top. It did have a white star on the chest, though. His fingers touched it tentatively.

"We added that mostly to annoy Tony, she said as she nodded towards the star. It might not fit perfectly yet, but we can adjust it."

He took it out , letting go of the bthrobe, and holding the uniform to his body like a child would hold a long-lost favorite toy that had been retrieved. He all but cradled it as he started weeping, and she hadn't quite expected this, but she hoped these were still good tears.

"I'll leave you to it. I'll be near the elevator if you need me."

He nodded, still hugging the garment. "Thank you. Thank you so, so much."

"You're welcome, Barnes, she said. "Guess I'd have your back, too."

As she walked out, she could here the sound of his phone dialing.

"Yeah, Steve, just heard your message..." she heard him say with a voice more composed that she'd expect him to have. "Still can't believe it..."

She closed the door behind her. There was more to that conversation, she was sure, but nothing that was meant for her ears.

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