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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I am...just so in love with this story. And like, not just in a "omg/holy shit/wow/squee" way (though there's plenty of that, too), but in a way that means I keep thinking about it, turning it over, and poking at it my head from different angles. It feels very *real* in a way I don't often see - this portrayal of a convoluted, messy but ultimately deeply loving relationship. You never doubt that the love is there, but you worry if the relationship will survive regardless. I just *care* about this version of them so much.

I'm probably not making much sense. This is why I'm not a writer. Some specific things I liked from this update:

- Steve's thoughts on keeping his desire and lust in check, and being careful. I thought you handled that especially beautifully.

- "They all looked like me" was a real gut-punch.

- Bucky's last story and the note on being unrepentant (and the fact that Steve holds that fact close).

It feels like they're making progress, even if things are still difficult, which makes me quietly happy.

Re-iterating that I hope you put this on ao3 or similar once it's done so I can give it all my love there, too.

This entire fill is so wonderfully exquisite in ways that I can't even put into words. Thanks for writing!

Oh my god!! Are you planning on continuing this because I'm on the edge of my seat, oh my god!!!

I'm wondering, too!

THIS IS MY FAV HTM FILL OF ALL TIME!!!! ALL TIME!!!!!!!!!!! thank you so damn much for writing. I don't even care if you abandon the fic because what you've written so far is so fucking good. Like, GODDAMN! Though pls...continue...pls pls pls

thank you so much!!! this is such a lovely comment (fake married undercover technically, the documentation having been created retroactively along with their identities)

thank you!

damn, thank you so much for this. i'm definitely still planning to put it up on ao3 when it's done, which, uh, in an ideal world, will be soon.

thank you!!

For the first time since they moved in, they’re out in the backyard. It’s not much of a yard, just a fenced-in slab of cement about the size of their bathroom. But it’s more of a yard than either of them’s ever had, and yesterday Steve stared at it through the window while he gripped his cooling coffee and thought, That doesn’t have to be grim, asshole. That’s space and we own it.

When Bucky got home that afternoon, Steve had decked out the yard with a white metal table, three white metal chairs, and a plastic flamingo.

Bucky entered the house through the window, gripping the flamingo by the neck. “What the hell is this thing?” he asked, and Steve said, “Oh, him? My new best friend.”

Bucky took it into the bedroom. Steve’s new best friend watched while they slept.

Hunched over the table, with its floral cutouts around the edges, Bucky’s working on decorating a series of index cards with crayons and a thick marker. Each time he chooses a new color, he seems to deliberate over the options painstakingly, and he’s got his arm wrapped around the cards like they’re his babies. Like Steve might try to eat them.

Steve has no interest in eating Bucky’s young. He has only slightly more interest in the work he’s doing on his laptop, watching security footage from Natasha. The outside of a gas station, seemingly located in the middle of nowhere, almost a year ago. He asked her, “What am I looking for?” and she said, “You tell me,” before the line went dead.

Bucky lies his head on the table. His hair is in a high ponytail and fans out to obscure the index cards. An indigo crayon stays clenched in his hand. He says, “Maybe the flamingo should come back out. Sun’s good for birds.”

Steve pauses the footage on an employee slumped against the wall and smoking. “I don’t know. I liked waking up to him watching us.”

“Of course you like fucking waking up to a dinosaur staring at you. I can’t believe that thing usurped my job.”

“It’s your own fault.”

Bucky rolls the crayon between his fingers. “True enough. Are you gonna ask what I’m doing?”

“You know, you’re kind of going out of your way to telegraph that it’s a secret.”

“Yeah, exactly, and I’m not doing that for my health. I know you can’t stand not to know something. And you don’t exactly got both eyes on that gas station.”

Steve nudges his laptop over to the side. Slides down in his chair and stretches his legs out and crosses his arms and ankles. Bucky’s still smushing his cheek against the table, smiling at Steve almost imperceptibly. There’s a black streak on his cheekbone where he got himself with the marker.

Steve says, “Okay, fine. What’re you working on, Buck?”

“Who wants to know?”

“The CIA. Come on.”

Bucky smiles at him full-on. He lifts his head and slides the index cards across the table. Each has a different stylized bird, all the white space filled in with vivid, clashing colors. There’s the flamingo, holding a beer. Steve’s grinning and squinting when he looks back at Bucky. “These are--Really striking. I like them.”

“Aren’t they? They’re for Sam. I’m mailing him one a week. Gotta keep the romance alive somehow.”

Steve snorts. “Right. This very romantic drawing of a duck with a cigar.”

“That’s me.” He gestures with his chin. “The angry pigeon is you.” Its human fists are raised, and it glares at the viewer.

“And I don’t get to keep this striking likeness?”

“I’ll make you a photocopy.” He drags them back toward himself one-by-one. Stacks them up. Focused on straightening the edges, he says, “Can you cut my hair again?”

“Oh. I can. Yes?”

Bucky shakes his head like dislodging a flea. “Not in an erotic way. You’re just good at it.” He shrugs his metal shoulder high, then takes a moment to brush his ear against the surface. Probably savoring how it’s warmed from the sun, and Steve wants to reach across and press his own face to Bucky’s shoulder. “You really should open a barber shop.”

“I don’t know. What if I’m only good at it when I’m turned on? That could make for some damning Yelp reviews.”

“What if you wore a chastity belt?”

Steve snickers. “Not happening. How short did you want it?”

“Not short. But it’s gonna be a bitch to deal with in the heat.” He turns so he’s in profile, and picks the ponytail up, waving it at Steve. “I’ve got enough hair for a family of five.”

“It’s rude not to save some for the rest of us.”

“I’m a rude guy. It's your bad influence.”

“I’ll cut your hair.” Steve makes a note of where he’s paused the footage and exits out of the program. Shuts his laptop and makes to stand up.

Bucky holds out his right hand to stop him. “Could you do it out here? It’s nice out here.”

“Sure. I can do that.” It is nice, so bright it’s almost sparkling. A crystal of a day, with loose leaves blowing in from the neighbors’ fruit trees. “Do you want to get something I can do it with?”

Instead of answering, Bucky gathers up his index cards and drawing supplies and retreats inside, this time using the door. With the laptop closed, all Steve can think to do is study his own hands. To lay them on the table and look at the backs. The nails, smooth and clean, the places where he still remembers scars. It occurs to him, too late, that “something,” was dangerously vague, and for all he knows, Bucky’s going to return with the knife.

But Bucky sets a comb and a pair of haircutting scissors on the table when he returns. He sits straight-spined in his chair and slips the rubber band out of his hair, leaving it to fall in his face and across his shoulders. He lays a gleaming finger against the notch where his throat meets his clavicle. “Just to here. Please.”

“I can try to manage that.” Steve grabs the comb and scissors and pulls the third chair up behind Bucky’s. At first, he finger-combs through a section, and Bucky’s soft there, but tangled up in layers and layers. He settles the comb perfectly straight in his hair, an inch from the ends, holding Bucky still with the teeth.

Before he can cut-- “You’re telling the truth?”

“About what? My thick hair? The drawings for Sam? My legendary skee-ball skills?”

“Your sub-par skee-ball skills, sure. No. You said this isn’t supposed to be erotic. That’s the truth?”

Bucky cranes his neck to look at him, and Steve manages to keep the comb in place. Bucky makes a face like he’s trying to scare off a mountain lion. “Really? I’m not gonna ask you to non-erotically cut my hair and then, ‘Surprise! Here’s my boner.’ Come on.”

“All right, I’m just. Verifying that we’re on the same page. I'll keep this boring.” He nudges Bucky’s head back to neutral. He starts to trim.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “We’re on the same page.” All irritation or humor has been wrung out of his voice. Though he tries to muster some more up when he adds, “Besides, what’s arousing about scissors? They're no knife.”

Steve’s eyes zero in on the slender blades. There’s the swift shick of sound when they meet. How they’re the same silver as Bucky’s arm and would be much more efficient than a knife, really, at cutting anything off of him. He says, “Well, I think that depends who you ask.”

Lodging Bucky’s fingers in the handle’s holes would be a simple way to make him keep his hands to himself. One of them, at least.

Bucky’s tongue taps wetly against his top gums, more short and thoughtful than tutting. A breeze kicks up, scattering the glassy laughter of their neighbor’s windchimes, and scattering Bucky’s hair too. Like he’s a romantic heroine. Steve pauses his cutting, waits for everything to be still again.

Before he can start back up, Bucky says, “You noticed I’ve stopped, right?”

“Stopped what? Playing skee-ball?”

A long sigh. “No, I play skee-ball all the time. I play skee-ball in my sleep, Steve. You’re saying you haven’t noticed that? I’ve stopped bothering you about fucking me.”

“I did notice, actually.” He isn’t sure whether he should keep cutting. But it’s something to do, something they can both focus on if they have to, so he sets the comb’s teeth against Bucky’s nape and gives him a chance to say, What are you doing barbering me? This is a serious conversation. Nothing. Steve snips at his hair and says, “About the skee-ball. And that you’ve stopped. Talking about that.”

“Okay. Good.” An aborted movement ripples through his neck and shoulders. “And that was the right move?”

“Shutting up about it?”

“Yeah.”

Long and well-cared for, Bucky’s hair curls a little. It springs back into shape every time Steve moves on from a section. That makes it harder to know he’s cutting it all the same length, but it also means precision doesn’t matter as much.

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “I guess that depends. Can you tell me what ‘the right move’ means?”

“What do you mean, can I tell you what it means? It means--That’s what I was supposed to do, right?”

“There wasn’t a--” He cuts a thicker bunch, the trimmings skittering into a clump on Bucky’s shirt like a cockroach. “A supposed to.”

“I’m not tryna get you to spare my feelings, dumbass.”

“Great, because I’m not trying to spare them.”

He knows perfectly well that he won’t fuck Bucky’s hair up just because he’s suddenly tense. He can do a hell of a lot of precise and finicky and genuinely dangerous things under pressure. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t picturing his hand veering off, out of his control, and hacking away at Bucky’s hair until none remains. And if there’s no reason to have that image playing in his head, then he won’t let it play.

He goes around and sits in the chair still facing Bucky. Slips the scissors and comb each into a separate pocket. Bucky looks caught-off-balance. Soft and open as a skinned rabbit. Instead of asking why Steve stopped, he blinks more than he needs to.

Steve says, “Don’t worry. I’ll finish later.” The click of Bucky grinding his teeth. “I’m not trying to spare your feelings or your hair. But seriously, can you tell me what ‘the right move’ is? Tell me like you think I’m stupid.”

The moment he’s said it, he registers that he’s made a space for Bucky to respond, Well, don’t I? Normally, that would be fine. Those are spaces they’ve always made for each other, worn smooth with their knuckles and teeth. But if Bucky says it right now, with the sky sharp and white, hair trimmings on his shoulders, Steve gripping his own knees hard--it’s going to sound real.

Bucky doesn’t say, Well, don’t I? He closes his eyes and smirks and says, “If that’s what you need.” He opens them. His gaze locks over Steve’s shoulder.

“That’s all I’m asking. You said you were ‘supposed to.’” Steve shrugs. “Says who?”

“Says the fucking--law of being good to you. Of being a good friend to you.”

“A good friend.”

“Yeah, look, I. Fuck. Can you hand me the comb?” Steve does, pressing it into Bucky’s outstretched, pale palm. Now, Bucky looks at the ground as he combs through the bottom half of his hair. He’s pulling harshly, probably yanking on knots. But his face is placid. “Thanks. This helps.”

“I’m always happy to hand you a comb.”

“Right. And I felt confident about that. It’s why I asked.” His head sways into the comb’s motion. “The sex thing--That I kept asking you about for a long time. Too long, right? I bet I missed some cues there.”

“And you’re saying that now you’re--You’re not confident. That I’ll want to fuck you.”

“Nah, I am confident that you don’t. I didn’t get that before.”

Steve makes a noncommittal noise. Bucky pauses with the comb caught in his hair, holding it straight out from his head. “Steve. You’re looking at me like I’m a bird from another planet. Am I talking sense or not?”

“I think that you understand exactly what you’re saying. But I don’t.”

Back to the combing. Back to closing his eyes. “All right already. Fine. Like I think you’re stupid: First, I kind of thought that you hated me. For what happened to me. And I was mad about it. Then I thought, No, he’s being sweet. He’s talking like I had no choice. Which brought me to another problem: Thought you didn’t want to just 'cause you didn’t understand. So I tried explaining to you. But I maybe didn’t do a very good job. And I thought, the book. That’ll make it all clear. And you read it. And I know it explained things. But you still didn’t want to. So you really don’t want to, I guess.”

He pops an eye open. Steve says, “And now you’re done asking.”

“Yeah. Now I’m done asking. Can I comb your hair?”

Steve nods, not really looking at Bucky. Flexing his brow, trying to puzzle through it. Trying to dissect his own every move. Was the dividing line between husband and friend whether or not he put the book down on Bucky’s birthday and said, “Okay, sure, let’s fuck?”

Trailing the comb through Steve’s much finer hair, Bucky says, “Is that stupid enough?”

“It’s not stupid.”

“I mean did I talk like you’re stupid enough?”

Steve sighs. The motion of the comb is soothing. He feels like a pile of leaves getting raked into place. Consolidated. “Can you tell me what you think the book explained?”

“Well. That the--” There’s a pause between words like he’s just humoring Steve when he continues, “rapes aren’t a problem. I know everything that happened. I remember it. And I don’t think about it how you want me to. I know that. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t. Who the fuck knows. Processed. And thinking about you fucking me feels good. It always feels good. That’s what I want to think about.”

Steve is quiet.

Bucky’s tone gets artificially cheery. “Anyway, that didn’t change anything for you, so, y’know. I had it wrong, I guess. So I’ll just think about it and not bother you. It’s okay. Really.” He’s combed Steve’s hair down so that it swoops across his forehead. Steve brings his fingers to the flattened hair, and they’re met with the comb. After a moment, he tugs the comb free from Bucky’s grasp and twists to look at him.

Bucky’s face is blank. “Bucky.” Bucky nods. “All right, I’m not saying I don’t appreciate you respecting my wishes, but you’re kind of wrong about my wishes.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You didn’t tell me that the book was the end of the conversation. I assumed we were going to keep talking.”

“Why?”

Steve drags a hand down the side of his face. “Because that’s what you’re supposed to do. Not secretly break up with me based on a test that I didn’t know I was taking.”

“Oh, now there’s a supposed to?” Looking skittish about it, Bucky lifts his metal hand. He places the knuckles under Steve’s chin and lifts. Cocks his own head and stares. “I wasn’t breaking up with you, honey. I just thought we wouldn’t have sex anymore.”

“Oh.” Steve works hard to keep his eyes on Bucky’s face. The mess of his beard and the gentleness of his jaw underneath. “That’s not necessarily what I want. If we can, I want to figure out how to fuck you. And I thought I’d give you space after you basically gutted yourself on the page.”

Bucky frowns. “Huh. Fuck. It’s a shame we can’t hear each other’s thoughts, huh?”

The horror Steve feels when he imagines that must show, because Bucky throws his head back and barks with laughter, his hand still warm beneath Steve’s chin.

He finishes cutting Bucky’s hair in the bathroom. They watch themselves in the mirror, Steve’s head over Bucky’s shoulder, and the only time they talk is when Bucky smiles and says, “You really think I gutted myself on the page?” and Steve says, “It was impressively raw, Buck. You get a gold star.”

As Steve’s clearing the dishes after dinner, Bucky disappears. In the distance, Steve hears the printer in his office turn on and start chugging away. All the dishes are clean and in the drying rack by the time Bucky returns with an armful of papers. With precise motions, he sets about covering the table, lining up the edges of each sheet until he’s constructed an enormous map of Europe in black and white.

Steve says, “Sure. Why not?”

Bucky sits at the table and clasps his hands in front of him. He makes his face very serious, but breaks into laughter in seconds. “Come on, you said you wanted to ‘figure out’ how to fuck me. Figured I’d get us in a strategic mood.”

“That's what this is?”

“Or I think nostalgia’s funny. Who can say for sure? You wanna sit down?”

Steve dries his hands on his khakis and sits across from Bucky. He traces the outline of Italy with his fingertip. Bucky’s in blue, with bruises under his eyes, and Steve does, it turns out, feel nostalgic. And it is, it turns out, funny, like a shadowy presence in his stomach, gobbling him up from the inside.

He says, “Shouldn’t we have game pieces here? To represent us?”

“Yeah, you wanna make the top hat and the wheelbarrow fuck on top of France?”

“Well, who wouldn’t?” The joke hangs limply in the air. Bucky frowns at the map. Maybe it was supposed to make everything clearer. But Steve finds it in him to start, “What if. What if we had tried having sex differently? Without me being an asshole.”

And Bucky looks back up at him. “But I don’t like that kind of sex. Do you?”

“I. Uh.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean. Maybe I could?”

“Not really relevant if I can’t.”

“No. It’s not.” Relief rushes into his whole body like a physical shock of bracing cold. Like waking up early in the winter for a run, trembling and exhausted and alive. Bucky knows that his own boundaries matter, and Steve didn’t even have to remind him.

Now Bucky’s cracked open, making minuscule tears in the edges of the map, rushing through his words. “I still want you. I still want you to—” He swallows. His cheeks sink in his face with the force of it, and Steve can hear his saliva moving. “To do those things to me. I want it, Steve. This isn’t something I was taught. It wasn’t tortured into me. It’s me.”

“I know that. Intellectually. I know. What kind of things we did.”

“Remember that time you Scotch-taped me to the floor?” Mirth seeps into Bucky’s voice. He rubs his thumb and forefinger together, an old, anxious habit in a new arm. “You got some of it on my hair and I bitched at you for days because eleven hairs got torn out.”

“Yeah.” Steve feels his mouth twist into one of his uglier—and therefore more real—smiles. “It was eleven exactly. You kept the tape in your jacket pocket to pull out and glare at whenever you got grouchy.”

Bucky doesn’t even complain about being called grouchy. “And while I was down there?"

While he was moaning and trying not to rip the tape up? Of course Steve remembers his tensed muscles. The shiver in his legs. His face turned to the side so Steve could see any tears. “Yeah. I hit you all over with a folded-up jump rope.”

“Didn’t even hurt enough.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, crybaby.”

“Right. And you called me that. And small. And pretty.”

“Little and pretty and helpless.” It feels like reading from a script, but a script he’s seeing for the first time, bright-eyed and fast-hearted, excited to know how it ends. Not something taped to the back of a prop shield.

“Yeah. And then—” He cackles, pitching forward—“you started babbling about the price of groceries!”

“They were expensive that week! I was broke.” Really, Steve can’t remember if that’s true or not, but he has to defend his younger self’s embarrassingly clean-cut dirty talk.

“Probably because you bought a fucking oak bookcase or something against my advice.”

“Where the hell would I have put an oak bookcase? The moon?”

“Sure, exactly. The moon.” Bucky’s face grows serious and focused, like he’s trying to find the bookcase through a telescope. Then it clears, and he looks like he’s having fun again as he continues the story. “Anyways, then you jerked off on my back and smeared it on a welt.”

“Please. Buck. It didn’t hurt enough but I left welts? Someone needs to get his story straight.”

“It was just the one welt.” The left side of his mouth curves up and he looks over his shoulder. Right at the Keebler elves painting, framed by the living room doorway. “And you looked at that welt, and you said, ‘I know what to do with that. I’m gonna rub my goddamn come on that thing.’” He snorts.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know.” It just flew out of him, like a sneeze. Not for the come on the welt, but maybe for everything else in the world.

“I wanted it.” Bucky stares him down. “I want it now.”

“I know you do.” It comes out more certain than he feels. “But it makes you slip away.”

“Is that all that bad?”

“Yeah, Buck. It is. It’s where I draw the line. I want to fuck you. Not your body.”

“What’s the difference?” He sounds like he’s joking, but barely. Like he realized at the last second that it would be better-received as a joke.

“Everything, Buck. It’s everything. You’re—” He can’t finish, but it’s obvious enough what he was going to say. He’s always been a repetitive person.

“And what’s my body, chopped human flesh?”

Steve laughs. “It’s okay too. A good head of hair. A nice nose.”

“Not like your monstrosity.”

“Fuck off. You’re the one who broke it!”

“Once!” Bucky holds up a finger and shoves it toward Steve’s face. “Only once. And it was an accident. I swear to god it was an accident.”

“I’ll bet you a quarter that’s the time that fucked it up worst.”

Bucky smiles and looks down. Pokes his tongue out between his front teeth, then reels it slowly back in. He says, “What happens now, then?”

“What do you want to happen?” Bucky raises his head. “Let’s talk hypotheticals. You thought we weren’t having sex anymore. What would have happened? In a universe where fucking’s off the table.”

Bucky knocks on the actual table, and Steve rolls his eyes at him. “What if. Fucking weren’t off the table.”

“Bucky, it’s hypothetical.”

“Hear me out, Steve, come on. If you don’t want to, we won’t, but I have an idea, all right? What if we just—were more exact about fucking.”

“Like what if we used a yardstick?”

“Let me finish. What if we did that again?”

“Did what?”

“You coming on a welt.”

“Oh, a disembodied welt?”

“Sure. I’d pay to see that.”

“Why?”

“Seems funny. But really, what if it were just. Stuff I can only associate with you. Because we’ve done it exactly the same before.” He directs his gaze to the painting again.

Ever since Bucky started down that particular block of memory lane, Steve’s been trying to ignore the blood headed to his dick. And now he’s imagining taping the Bucky in front of him to the floor, either using stronger tape or using the same tape so he’d have to say extra still, either laying the tape over a larger portion of hair or carefully fixing his hair in an up-do. And having to modulate his strength to leave exactly one welt, taunting Bucky with not enough pain on the rest of his skin.

He stops picturing it, and focuses on digging his fingernails into the bridge of his own nose. “That could be a colossally terrible idea.”

“It could be a tiny terrible idea, or a colossally amazing one.”

Steve purses his lips and glares at him around the fingers still pinching his nose. “Come on, now you know what it looks like when things go south, right? So we can just, you know, be on the lookout for those things.”

“You mean I can be on the lookout. You can’t be on the lookout for not being able to be on the lookout.”

“I sort of can. It’s not—It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, does it? It isn’t fucking falling from a—You know. It’s just like going down the slide at a playground.”

“Inevitable.”

“No, dummy. Gravity’s not always—You can grab onto the sides, right? If you don’t want to slide down the slide, you just grab something. And now I know that it’s a bad thing, so I’ll do that.”

“What do you mean that now you know it’s a bad thing?”

“I mean what I said. I didn’t know it was a bad thing, but now you’ve explained it to me. I won’t go down the slide, Steve. Scout’s honor.”

Steve goes to a toy store and buys a jump rope. When he left the house, it seemed smarter than going to an athletics store—That kind of store might call attention to his body, which might call attention to his identity. But of course this is a terrible theory, because the toy store has a whole aisle of Avengers merchandise. Some of the Captain Americas are Sam, but some are him, and he tugs his knit cap further down his face and buys the jump rope in a rush and hits the road, feeling like his chest is too tight to be worth having.

That night, more relaxed, in the process of getting ready for bed, he shows Bucky the jump rope. It’s an electric blue striped with black, the plastic handles flecked with glitter. The kind of thing Bucky would find beautiful.

But Bucky, in the process of taking his pants off, stops with them halfway down his thighs and says, “What’s that supposed to be?”

“You know what it is, Buck. It’s a jump rope. For, you know.” He uses his free hand to mime cracking a whip.

Bucky giggles at him. “That’s not a jump rope. Maybe that’s the shit they call a jump rope nowadays, but look.” He twists his metal arm behind him to ruck his shirt up at the back until most of his skin is revealed. The scars around his arm are still changing with time. The line Steve cut into his hip has been gone for ages. “Smack me with it. Just a quick one. I’ll be fine.”

Steve frowns at the jump rope. He pulls off the plastic strips binding it into a tight loop, and reshapes it into a much larger loop. Then positions himself like he’s getting ready to hit a foul ball, and cracks the rope through the air as lightly as he can to land across Bucky’s shoulders.

Bucky shudders. He breathes in, out, loudly. He grunts and puts his shirt back down. When he turns, he looks fine, smiling and present. He says, “Yeah, see, that didn’t feel anything like last time. What the hell is that thing made of?”

“What? It’s rope, Bucky. They had some kind of rubber and some kind of rope, and I knew we didn’t want rubber.”

“We do want rope.” Bucky runs a flesh finger over the rope, then rubs it with his knuckle. “But this is some synthetic shit.”

“You love synthetic shit.”

“I do. And I love you for getting this, but we need the genuine artifact. Real-live rope. Let me handle it.”

Steve can’t help but feel that it’s not the material of the jump rope that disrupts the illusion, but the amount of thought they’re putting into the material of the jump rope. Before, he would have picked up the jump rope to hit Bucky because it was sitting around their apartment, because Bucky used it to keep limber for boxing.

“How into this are we getting? Roleplaying ourselves. Should we have you up on a platform so I seem shorter?”

“Can’t we just chop a couple feet out of there somewhere?”

“Less than one foot. I was less than one foot shorter.”

“Okay, so we’ll chop off less than one foot. Do you really use your calves for much of anything?”

“Kicking the ever-loving shit out of you.”

“Aw, no, that’s a different old-timey roleplay I want to do. Keep the calves; I don’t think your height’s important. Suspenders maybe. Pushed off your shoulders. Just hanging there. And a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.”

“Are you getting turned on describing my clothes?”

“Of course. That was a good look on you. I always felt real small when you looked like that. Like you’d come to put me in my place.”

“That’s good. Because I had. And I’m going to a—again.” He rakes a hand through Bucky’s hair, and scratches very lightly at the exposed skin of a thigh. It doesn’t matter how much thought they put in. Maybe. He prays.

They were twenty and twenty-one and drinking on the fire escape. Some time deep into the night; some time warm, Steve thinks. Bucky said to him, “So what if I was tied to the railroad tracks?” and Steve said, “Well, I guess you’re getting run over.”

There would have been other voices out still, other people leaving bars and rattling around and living their lives. Other people’s cigarette smoke, and trash left out in the sun, and lights on in scattered apartment windows.

Bucky grunted and mussed Steve’s hair. “All right, try this on for size: what if I was tied to the railroad tracks and you were there?”

Steve shrugged. Gulped his shitty beer. “I hope I’d untie you, but you know how my joints are.” He dangled the bottle between his fingers and tried to smile, but his mouth puckered small instead.

Bucky jabbed him in the chest with one finger. His left leg was thrown across Steve’s lap, their bodies catty-corner. “Try this: what if I was tied to the railroad tracks, but the train was still a long way off. You’re gonna untie me just like that? Not gonna do anything else first?”

“Trains are unpredictable. I’d untie you immediately.”

Bucky looked away from him, training his eyes on a storefront across the street. Tight jaw and slumped shoulders, knowing Steve was being difficult on purpose but disappointed anyway. Steve bumped his forehead against Bucky’s shoulder and continued, “And then I’d take you home and teach you a lesson about letting yourself get kidnapped and tied to the railroad tracks in the first place.”

Bucky made a small, almost-giggling noise, then self-corrected and said, “Hmm.” Still not looking at Steve, which maybe meant it wasn’t the right answer or maybe meant Steve had sounded as casual and confident as he meant to and gotten Bucky flustered. It must have been that one, because then Bucky said, “Well, you better make the punishment fit the crime.”

They didn’t have railroad tracks, but they had enough tape, and enough floor, and they got the job done. Probably Steve did get off talking about the price of groceries, making this as ordinary as anything, as safe and stable and good to have: Bucky trapped on the floor for him, waiting for a train to mow them both down.

“Did I really leave a welt?” It seems harsher and harsher, the more he flips it around his head. The tape and the jump rope and making him feel small, sure, but the welt doesn’t gel with how he pictures himself having been.

Bucky’s bustling around their bedroom, putting away laundry through the circuitous process of first taking every article of clothing out of the closet and drawers so that it can all be folded and organized in the same fashion as the clean, warm new stuff. The room looks a mess at this point, clothes thrown into piles all over the floor, and Bucky pauses in the eye of the hurricane. Gives Steve, who’s leaning in the doorway, a skeptical once-over.

He says, “You ever had come rubbed on a welt? It’s memorable. I promise.”

“And you’re not—“

“Crazy? Delusional? Sure, but not about that.” He kicks at a pile of red cloth. Steve inches further into the room.

“I wasn’t going to say those. I just don’t remember.”

“Huh. That’s a fun change of pace.”

“I know. I’ve got the brains of two jellyfish, I guess.”

“So still zero.”

“Ha ha.” He looks hard at Bucky, who tilts his head to the side, face impassive. “You’re joking.” Bucky shakes his head. “They’re not plants.”

“It’s fucked up, right?” He makes a ring with his forefinger and thumb. “No brains at all. Like us.”

Steve comes further into the room and flops backward onto the bed. The small amount of already folded clothes bounce next to him. “I hate the ocean.”

“But honeypie, it’s the outer space of Earth.”

“Yeah, and I hate outer space. And the Earth.”

“Zero adventurous spirit, I tell ya.” Bucky comes and bends over him but doesn’t touch. Just peers.

“Of course. Zero adventurous spirit. Zero brains. I’m pretty much an all-around zero.”

So Bucky sticks his fleshy fingers in Steve’s mouth, prying it open and round. Steve smacks him on the back of the hand. His mouth is returned to him. “Stay out of there,” he says. The particular laugh that comes over Bucky reminds him of the Keebler elves. They kiss, sloppy-good.

I'M VERY EXCITED ABOUT THE WELTS

Somehow, 'an enormous map of Europe' is the perfect point for a chapter break. I am delighted by how the sudden cut off is causing me to react. Your writing fascinates and satisfies to no end.

[pleased whale noises]

Ahh, I'm so happy about this update. They're communicating! And communicating about what they're trying to communicate! And working through! Very excited to see where this goes next.

Also: Do you mind me asking if you have another series on ao3 that has story titles mentioning Balloons and Hover-Cars? No worries if you want to stay anon, but the writing style in that series feels very similar to this (although the subject matter is different) and both stories feel very unique in the way they explore the characters' psychologies :) (Goes without saying that I love both!)

please oh my god i need this

BUCKY'S SINGLE, DEARLY BELOVED WELT, SOON TO BE JOINED IN HISTORY BY ANOTHER SINGLE WELT (thanks i'm glad you're excited!)

:) :) :) thanks

lol yes, you've correctly guessed my identity. and thank you! :)

tbh i was annoyed that the character limits forced me to cut it off there so i'm glad you actually liked that! thank you!!!

I'm not sure it's what you wanted, but I started writing this inspired by your prompt :)
http://archiveofourown.org/works/8816017/chapters/20213125

Just re-read this whole thing from start to finish and I'm DEAD. Please please please don't let this be permanently abandoned.

second that

Wow this is an amazing story! Just found and read it all in one go. My heart breaks for both Steve and Bucky but they have such a great group looking after them now. Thank you!

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Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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