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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“Christmas?” Nick repeats.

“Christmas Eve,” Alexander corrects. “The last thing I want is to keep you away from your mother. She’d have my head for that.”

“You want me,” Nick says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “To spend Christmas Eve. At your house?”

“I hardly see why not.” Alexander taps the nub of his pen against a manila folder on the desk. “Surely we qualify as friends by this point? Why shouldn’t you come? Our housekeeper makes this incredible roast with—”

“Alex.” Nick puts his hand down on the desk, stilling the pen. “This might have slipped your mind given all the long nights you pull here, but you’re married. You think your wife’s gonna want the man fucking her husband carving the turkey?”

“It’s ham,” Alexander says evenly. “And you wouldn’t be carving it. That’s my son-in-law’s job. Anyway, my wife’s wanted to meet you since Bogotá. As soon as she was done slapping me about it, she demanded to see the man who’d saved our child. She’ll probably want to kiss you.”

Slapping Alexander doesn’t sound like a bad idea right now. Nick wonders briefly if that would get him hard. “You’re such an idiot.”

“Some would say it’s my best quality.”

The Christmas Eve dinner goes more smoothly than Nick had expected. The most awkward moment is when Pierce’s daughter insists on having Nick feel her belly, proudly announcing that her child’s either going to be Nicholas or Nichole. She’s not even showing yet.

The housekeeper eats with them, and Mrs. Pierce spends most of the time talking with her about some Christmas charity drive they’d both taken part in. It makes it easier for Nick to settle back in his chair, to relax. And it is a damn good roast.

It’s not until the housekeeper’s gone home and Pierce’s daughter is off with her husband to the guest house that Mrs. Pierce turns her attention to him.

Alexander wasn’t wrong about the kissing. But he could have mentioned it would be long and deep instead of a grateful peck on the face.

“Beverly’s been waiting to do that for a long time,” Alexander says when Nick pulls away for air. “You like girls, Nick?”

He looks pleased with himself. It dawns on Nick as he’s catching his breath that Alexander invited him here for a threesome knowing damn well Nick’s driving his mother to a Christmas church service in the morning. Goddamn it.

“Well enough, Alex,” Nick answers just as easily.

Beverly fits so readily between them that Nick knows this isn’t her first time in bed with her husband and one of his flings.

The next time they’re alone in Alexander’s office, Nick backhands him with a fraction of his strength behind it, calling him a reckless fool. As expected, it turns Alex on.

It’s more rare than not for Alex’s wife to join them in bed, but she makes it clear she has no problem with Nick stopping by. It’s easier to coordinate than the hotels and with their jobs, Nick has every reason to make visits to Alex. It becomes a habit quickly, dropping in when he has the time. On occasion he finds himself invited to dinner.

It’s October, nearly a year after that Christmas dinner, when Beverly stumbles into the bedroom while Alex and Nick are at it, tipsy and dressed up as Peggy Carter.

“Our church,” Alex explains, flushed and panting as he tries to catch his breath. “Halloween party, you know, for the parents who think their kids will be kidnapped by Satanists if they trick or treat. Bev’s a chaperone every year. And she’s been obsessed with Agent Carter since she was a girl.”

Beverly laughs, collapsing into the vanity chair more than sitting on it. “You act so innocent. Don’t let him fool you, Nick, the only thing that gets him harder faster than Carter is Captain America.”

“Oh really?” Nick asks, and Alex’s face is much redder than their previous fooling around justifies.

Beverly stands back up once her boots are off, fumbling with the buttons of her army jacket. It really is a perfect replica, and tailored to her body like a glove. “He likes to be called Steve,” she whispers, somehow managing to be louder than if she’d shouted. “Have fun.”

“Should have figured you for a Rogers fan,” Nick says once the door clicks shut. “He might be the biggest idiot in American history.”

“He saved the world,” Alex protests, but he’s so flushed and smiling and entirely too good-looking.

“And couldn’t think to crash a plane in warmer water.” Nick shakes his head. What is it, he wonders, about white boys and Captain America? There’s no malice in the thought; it’s just such a cliché, and Alex is rarely so typical. Steve Rogers seems to be every white fairy’s first crush, probably because of the government’s insistence on slapping his image on every textbook and recruitment flier they can. Let a kid sleep with a poster over his bed of some blond god in a spangly outfit with pecs bigger than most women’s tits, and what do you think he’ll end up jerking it to?

Nick slaps his hand against Alex’s flank. “On your knees, Rogers. I’m not done with you yet.”

He means it as more of a joke than anything else, a harmless taunt, but the shiver that runs through Alex at his words tells Nick that he’ll have to try that name again.

Later, when Alex is lying on top of him, both too fucked out to move, Nick can’t help laughing to himself.

“What?” Alex asks, shifting his head slightly.

“You know, I have to meet with Carter next week. Look her in the eye and try not to think of your wife pistol-whipping you.”

Alex’s laugh is exhausted but genuine, and music to Nick’s ears.

There’s no expectation of exclusivity between them.

Alex is married, for one, and as the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick spends no shortage of time holed up on ops halfway around the world. He takes what he can get. They both do. It’s not something that they’ve had to discuss; with their lifestyles, it’s an unspoken understanding. Nick knows they both use condoms with strangers, but other than that, he’s never asked about Alex’s sex life. He expects it’s like his own: opportunistic and largely impersonal. Alex is one of the few men he can fuck and hold a conversation with. He always figured he filled that same role for Alex.

Which is why it’s such a surprise when Nick drops in early one night to find a long-haired man in a bathrobe sitting on Alex’s couch.

“Nick!” Alex is on the couch too. Or was. He bolts upright so quickly when Nick makes his presence known that the liquid in his glass sloshes a little onto the hardwood.

The stranger doesn’t have a glass.

“I thought you’d be out of the country until next week?” Alex asks. He’s up now, offering his seat to Nick.

Nick doesn’t take it. “The trip got cut short.” Translation: The mission went belly-up and it’s a damn miracle there wasn’t a blood bath. He’s aching and tired, on edge from all the adrenaline his body’s churned out in the past few days. Coming here had seemed better than heading home alone. So much for that.

“Sorry to hear it.” Alex does look genuinely concerned, and Nick takes it there’ll be questions later. When he’s not walking in on Alex and some twink he brought home.

Well, twink’s not exactly accurate. The man’s young—or at least his seemingly perpetual pout makes him look it—and long-haired, with smoky eyeliner smudged poorly around his eyes, but he looks built enough under the robe, and there’s stubble dusting his face. Nick wonders where Alex picked him up. The clubs with all the glitter, makeup, and tulle had never seemed like Alex’s scene. Too public.

“You must be exhausted,” Alex says. “You should sit—I’m sorry, I’m being rude—Nick, this is—this is Jay.” He bites his lip, eyes darting between the two of them, and for the first time Nick wonders if this isn’t just some random lay. Does Alex have some young pretty guy who thinks they’re exclusive? Or is he worried about outing Nick? “He’s—a friend. Jay, this is Nick.”

It takes a second for Jay to nod in acknowledgement. His eyes are dead and dark and Nick wonders if he’s on something.

“Pleasure,” Nick says.

“Here.” Alex lays a hand on Nick’s arm. “Let me get you a drink, you look like you need it.” His grip is firm enough that Nick knows it’s not a request.

They don’t go to the kitchen. Instead, Alex moves to the den where his liquor cabinet is stored, closing the door behind them. “I’m sorry about that.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” It’s never been a closed relationship. “I’m the one who barged in.”

“He’s a friend,” Alex says, taking a decanter of brandy from the cabinet.

Nick can’t help a faint snort at that. It sounds like the excuse a scared teen would make to his mother: We’re just friends. He was just hanging out. In a bathrobe. Just guys being pals, that’s all. We were only kissing to practice for girls.

“More than a friend,” Alex amends. He sighs, handing Nick a glass. “Met him on a visit to the VA. He’s got a nasty case of shellshock, lost an arm to an IED.”

That explains his eyes. And why he wasn’t drinking; Nick’s seen his fair share of veterans with PTSD who turn into nasty drunks. And some who can’t stop crying once liquor’s in their system. Nick hadn’t noticed a missing arm or a prosthetic, but he hadn’t been staring at the guy’s hands either.

“I pulled some strings to get him in a program for military amputees,” Alex continues. “State of the art prostheses and physical therapy, that kind of thing.” He sips from his own glass. “Had him around a few times to see how he was doing, and, well.” A shrug. “I was going to mention him, but you’ve been out of the country, and if those messages had been intercepted…”

He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. Nick can imagine the headlines someone with a grudge against Alex could feed to the papers. Accusations of making a traumatized war hero prostitute himself for aid. Highlighting the age gap. Nasty stuff.

“You don’t owe me explanations.” Nick tries the brandy. It’s got to be obscenely expensive, but it tastes like a mouthful of liquefied wood. “You never ask about my guys.”

“I’m sorry I said your name.” The apology’s unexpected. Alex flushes and looks away. “I wasn’t thinking—I saw you and thought something awful must have happened on the op.”

Nick shrugs. As the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., he’s worked to keep himself out of the public eye. So Pierce’s boy toy knows his first name. Not exactly a threat to his career. “It’s fine. I’ll go, you have your fun. I can fill you in on the details tomorrow.”

Alex is biting his lip again. It makes his mouth look red and much too tempting. “How bad was it?”

“Not as bad as it could have been.”

Alex sighs. “You don’t have to spend the night alone. You can stay, it’s fine.”

“In your guest room?” Nick isn’t sure he relishes the thought of listening to Alex fuck a stranger, no matter how nice his sheets are.

“Well, you could.” For the first time since Nick arrived, Alex’s eyes sparkle with that familiar humor. “Or I could have a word with Jay and see if we can’t make room for one more.”

Nick shakes his head. He’s tired down to his bones and yet Alex still makes it seem more appealing than sleep, damn him. “That makeup of his. Does it run?”

“He can wash it off you if it does.” Alex drains the last of his glass. “Don’t question the fashion sensibilities of today’s youth, Nick, it never makes sense and they’ll only pout about it.” He starts for the door but stops, a hand on the knob and a smile on his face. “Oh, and Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“He likes to be called Bucky.”

“Where do you find these people?” Nick mutters, shaking his head in disbelief, but Alex has already closed the door behind him.

The kid’s prosthetic is a damn work of art. There’s a fake skin over top of the machinery, either printed or painted to look exactly like human flesh. Varying levels of translucency, veins, imperfections and hairs, even nails glued onto the ends of the fingers. It’s perfect until Nick actually touches it, feeling cold metal beneath the thin covering.

Jay doesn’t move when Nick touches his hand, doesn’t even look. Maybe the sensation’s lacking. Or maybe he’s lost in his head, despite Alex’s insistence that he’d been enthusiastic about this.

Alex settles on the bed across from Jay, reaching a hand out. He brushes the hair away from Jay’s face and Jay finally raises his head to meet his eyes.

He does look uncannily like Bucky Barnes, and Nick wonders if that’s what caught Alex’s eye to begin with.

“Bucky,” Alex breathes. He’s smiling, still stroking Jay’s hair. “You’re back. I thought I’d lost you.”

These two must have more of a roleplay kink than Nick’s ever gotten up to. Oh, he’s called Alex ‘Rogers’ more than a few times, barked at him for insubordination and recklessness, but this is more than that. It seems like a scripted scenario of Rogers rising from the dead to find his equally revived friend before they ride off on a white horse. Or something.

Briefly, Nick wonders if Alex’s wife ever gets involved with the pair of them.

Jay’s silent, although he brings his left hand up to hold Alex’s. The robe slides down on his shoulder as he moves, and Nick sees a gleam of metal where the prosthetic cover doesn’t come all the way up. There are scars all around his shoulder. Nick tries not to stare.

“I missed you so much, Buck,” Alex says. “I’ll never let you go again, I promise. You’re safe now, I won’t let you fall again.”

He leans in and kisses Jay, whose lips part readily to accept him. They trade slow kisses until their lips are red and swollen, and Nick has to admit it’s a beautiful sight.

He isn’t expecting it when Alex pulls away, turning to face him.

“Tell me to apologize,” he says.

Nick may be horny but he’s still exhausted, and it takes him a moment to react. “What?”

“To Bucky.” Alex tilts his head toward Jay. “For letting him fall. For losing him. Make me make it up to him.”

White people, Nick thinks. Can’t they just screw instead of turning it into some sexual epic? He holds in a sigh, reclining against the headboard. “Rogers,” he says sharply, and Alex straightens up, listening.

“You think you just shove your tongue down Barnes’s throat and that makes it all better?” Nick demands. “You left him to freeze in the Alps so you could take the glory on a suicide mission, but you promise it won’t happen again, so it’s all fine?”

“I had to—”

“Shut your mouth, soldier,” Nick snaps. “Did I give you permission to speak? You let Barnes fall off that train and you’re gonna make excuses? Tell him you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry, Bucky,” Alex says immediately. “I’m so sorry, you’re my whole world, I’d do anything for—”

“Doesn’t sound sincere to me,” Nick interrupts. “Try again, Rogers.”

“God, Bucky, I’ll do anything to make it up to you, I’m sorry, when I thought I’d lost you, I couldn’t make myself go on, I—”

“Pathetic.” Nick shakes his head. “That’s all you’ve got? There are better ways you can use your mouth to make it up to him.”

With a nod, Alex lowers his head into Jay’s lap. Jay looks as confused about all this as Nick feels, but he parts his legs readily, letting Alex lay kisses against his thighs as he works up to his cock. His lips part as Alex takes him in, and the moan that escapes him is so pretty that it more than excuses this melodrama.

“That better be the best damn blowjob of your life, Rogers.”

Alex manages to nod, and whatever he does with his tongue in that moment makes Jay shudder violently.

It doesn’t take long before Jay’s hips are rocking up to meet Alex’s mouth, lips slack and eyelashes fluttering. Stamina’s clearly not one of his strong points, but Nick supposes when you’re that pretty and young, it doesn’t matter much. Jay’s head falls back, hair moving with it to bare his long, pale throat. His hands wind in the silk sheets, and he comes with a loud cry, jolting against Alex with each aftershock. Flush spreads across his face and chest, his eyes wide and wet.

Damn. It’s not like Nick didn’t know how well Alex gave head; he’s been on the receiving end his fair share of times. But it’s Nick’s never seen himself go to pieces under Alex’s tongue, and even if he had, he doubts he does it as prettily as this guy.

Alex sits up, wiping his mouth before he catches Jay’s lips in another long kiss that leaves them both gasping to catch their breath.

“Well, sir,” Alex says, turning to face Nick, flushed and grinning and gorgeous, “did that do it?”

“I don’t know,” Nick replies, like he’s not hard enough to see stars. “It was all right.”

“All right?” Alex shuffles to Nick’s side, reaching around him to grab a bottle of lube from the nightstand drawer. “Let’s see if we can’t do better than that.”

“Stop running your mouth and get to it, then.”

Alex guides Jay to kneel on the mattress now, facing Nick. He practically poses him; Jay’s clearly too fucked out and blissful to do much of his own volition. Nick’s surprised he can hold himself up as Alex slicks his fingers and starts working them in. For a while, Jay just breathes, resting on his arms, but then Alex must start stroking his prostrate because there’s a sudden gasp he tries to muffle by biting down on his lip. He’s hard again, red and dripping. The benefits of youth.

“Make some noise, Buck.” Alex’s free hand pats Jay’s side. “Let Nick know how much you’re enjoying yourself, would you?”

Instantly, Jay’s mouth falls open. He lets out a moan that halts and wavers, cut short by a shuddering breath, and Nick knows it’s not fake. Alex draws a few more sounds like that out of him, deep and shaking, before he withdraws his fingers and the moans give way to a thin, reedy whine. Then Alex leans in to lick, and Nick’s palming himself through his pants as Jay trembles and cries out. How he’s still holding himself up, Nick has no idea.

This time, when Alex pulls away, Jay does slump down, face and chest resting on the bed. His cheeks are pink, hair slick with sweat. He’s struggling to catch his breath as Alex positions himself, stroking Jay’s thigh. “You ready, Buck?”

Jay nods, trying to heave himself back on all fours as Alex slides in. He gives up pretty quickly, staying sprawled on the bed with just his ass up, moaning into the mattress as Alex rocks his hips. He’s still once it starts, uncannily so, and Nick attributes it to being fucked into a higher plane of existence, but he can’t ignore the uneasiness settling in his stomach as he watches. He’s almost too still, silent until Alex told him to moan. He doesn’t even push his hips back. Even if this were his first time, wouldn’t there be some movement on reflex?

“C’mon, Bucky,” Alex gasps. “Don’t make me do all the work, huh?” He’s focused entirely on Jay, half lying on him to kiss at his shoulders, but it still feels eerily like he’s read Nick’s mind. It’s eerier still when Jay props himself up again just like that, moving his hips to meet Alex’s thrusts. It’s like watching a robot programmed to fuck.

“You like that?” Alex asks.

“Yeah,” Jay mutters, nails digging into the sheets. Nick realizes it’s the first thing he’s heard the man say.

There. Acknowledgement of his consent. Nick tries to force himself to swallow his misgivings. So the guy’s bad at fucking. Or maybe dealing with a traumatic brain injury from the explosion that took his arm. Whatever’s going on with him, it’s not like Alex brought home a life model decoy to screw. Get over it, Fury.

“You glad Nick told me to make it up to you?”

“Yeah,” Jay repeats. It comes out as a moan this time, long and loud.

“Why don’t you show him how glad you are, Buck?”

Then Jay’s freeing Nick from his pants as Alex slides his hand down to fist Jay’s cock, and shit, the guy may not know how to fuck but he can give head with the best of them.

The sex becomes infrequent over time.

Neither of them is getting any younger, and as S.H.I.E.L.D. grows, it eats more of Nick’s time, the way the World Security Council takes Alex. Then Nick’s mother died, and Alex’s wife got sick, and Tony Stark just had to build himself a powered suit of armor. In the course of a week, alien hammers fall from the sky and Captain America turns up frozen but very much alive.

Nick does spare a thought for Alex when he hears about that last one, wondering if his friend’s harder than ever at the news or dying of shame.

They’re still friends, of course. They make time for each other when they can, though that’s less and less often these days.

And when Nick asks Alex to delay Project Insight, he asks for Iron Man to meet his niece, not for Nick to spend a night.

It’s less than an hour later when Nick finds himself surrounded by would-be assassins.

Lying in a hospital bed under a bridge, Nick lies drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to ignore the pain. No morphine, not now. He can’t risk dulling his senses until he’s sure this is over. Preferably, until he’s put a bullet in that metal-armed killing machine’s head himself.

Metal arm.

The memory of an awkward sexual encounter he’s tried to forget enters Nick’s head unbidden.

“Goddamn it,” he says, ignoring the questions that follow from the doctor.

“Look, I didn’t know about Barnes.”

And sitting there on the receiving end of Rogers’s glare, stomach still churning at the realization of Pierce’s depravity, Nick thanks any god that may exist that Rogers doesn’t know about Barnes either. Not the extent of what Pierce did to him, at least. What he tricked Nick into.

If Rogers knew that, Nick would have that shield rammed through his skull.

this is so true.
hope you are ok, dear author.

This is such a gem. Thank you for this. (totally loled at the "dude what's with white guys" moment)

NICK JUST WANTS TO HAVE NORMAL PEOPLE SEX. IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK.

Just reading this again and remembering how much I love it. <3

Any chance it will go up on AO3, for bookmarking purposes?

(a!a) Thanks so much for your kind wishes, nonnie. In the immortal words of Granny Weatherwax, I Ate'nt Dead. This story is not abandoned, and it is lovely and encouraging to know that it continues to occupy your imagination (as it continues to occupy mine).

Also, see supra "it took Up Close Ache 22 months to update, so ... you're in good company!" A ridiculously flattering comparison but (I hope) a comforting sentiment for us both. I'm gonna come through for you in the end, wait and see. <3

That's wonderful to hear! There are quite a few of us still here waiting. I'd understand if you needed to leave, but am ecstatic that there's a chance for more.

I adore this

different anon. I started working on something that might head this direction. Putting it in round 4.

https://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/2271.html?thread=5327839#cmt5327839

[ur comments are So Much, I’m so flippen gratified u liked the “claustrophobia” and “tension” & stuff, I know it’s taking me forever to get back to ppl but it really means the world to me; & yeah, I probably will put this on Ao3 when it’s done if just bc some of the typos are killing me & I want a cleaner version LOL. also this is “6a” but 6b and 6c are going to be a couple days yet just FYI]

Sam got Steve back. A couple of times. Over and over.

The first time, Steve was behind bars and not himself. Barnes told Sam, "You don't have to see him. He says. If you don't want to." His mouth pulled. "Kind of wish I hadn't. It's weird."
¬¬
"I want to," Sam said, but he didn't go into the cell. He stomped sand off his shoes and brushed it off his skinned elbows. He said, "You, uh, you knew? When you called me? You and Natasha already knew."

Barnes shook his head, changed his mind. Nodded. "We knew what—Steve—in Rumlow's body said. I believed him. Not everybody did but…" He breathed in and then out, air hissing between his teeth. "I should have said?"

"No, I guess not."

"If I were you..." Barnes shrugged. "I'd have wanted to know. But if I were you..." He splayed his fingers at Sam. They buzzed.

"Yeah." Sam looked down at his own hands. "If you were me you couldn't have done anything about it once you knew." Sam was still expecting Barnes to turn it into a joke here. He'd left himself wide open. He was hoping for something along the lines of "yeah, what's it like to be useless without a super-special backpack?" He had a whole lineup of responses for that one.

Barnes dropped his head. "I came as fast as I could."

Sam thought he wouldn't be able to say anything, for a second, but Barnes wasn't looking at him. He had spit something out. "I know," he managed. He patted Barnes's arm on his way by.

Rumlow's—Steve's head shot up when Sam walked in, and he made a sound—maybe he'd moved too fast, or it was just seeing Sam that did it—but he sounded like Rumlow, from what Sam remembered of the Triskelion. He was sitting on the floor in the corner of the cell, and he pushed himself up in one movement, then staggered. "Sam," he said.

Sam stayed clear of the bars.

"Sam, it's me, I swear it's me." His voice sounded different than Sam remembered, and his face was practically melted off. The bars of the cell made it impossible to take all his features in at once. Sam wanted to recognize Rumlow. He wanted to be sure this was Steve, and he wanted to be sure he was in Rumlow's body. If he could see this, too, then Rumlow in Steve's body would be... easier.

"Come on, Sam, are you okay? You don't have to believe me, just say something, would you? Just..." He limped forward, one hand out, and stopped short of the bars.

"I believe you," Sam said.

Rumlow smiled. Jesus, that was Steve's smile, the sad barely-there one he used instead of crying or punching something. "No, you don't," he said. He stuck his hands through the horizontal bars and rested his wrists against a cross bar. "But you're alright?"

Sam nodded. He stepped a little closer. Steve's eyes darted across his face, searching, the same way they did after a firefight where he'd lost sight of Sam for too long. Steve’s eyes. They were brown, and level with Sam’s.

“You could ask me something,” Steve said. “Anything, I mean. To prove it’s me.” No Bronx in his voice, a hell of a lot of smoke inhalation, all the scar tissue around his mouth. That was why it didn’t sound like the Rumlow Sam remembered. He couldn’t expect everything to line up exactly.

“Yeah,” Sam said. He cleared his throat. This felt stupid. HYDRA had bugs that looked like earrings, or like buttons, or like nothing at all; they had years of access to Steve’s passwords and habits. “What’d we do for our first date?”

Steve’s big dumb panicked expression translated pretty well across physical forms. “Went out for dinner together?” he said, because even with his own life in the balance Steve Rogers planned to fake it till he made it. “We wanted Chinese but everywhere was closed because of the gas leak downtown, and we ended up at that little French place where everything cost at least forty dollars and we were the only ones wearing jeans and t shirts—”

“Okay, relax, I know we didn’t have a real first date,” Sam said. “That was a nice night though, good emergency call.” They’d been fucking for months before that night, but then, they’d been doing things that looked pretty date-like the entire time they’d been friends, they’d moved in together before they so much as kissed, they’d started fucking without really talking about it… It hadn’t been a chronologically traditional relationship.

Steve slumped forward against the bars. “That was mean.”

Sam shrugged. “Good to know you still step right into my traps.”

“Still, huh?” Steve’s fingers, too short and broad, jerked on the bars when he tried to tighten them. “It’s been a week.” His face shifted. The bars kept it sliced into separate pieces: here a cheek, there an eye. “I was planning on keeping it up for the foreseeable future.”

“I know. Me too.”

“And now?” Steve swayed on his feet, but locked his elbows and stayed upright. Sam watched, and not until Steve was steady again did it occur to him that he should be worried, that—Steve—the body Steve was in had serious injuries. “Sam, don’t—maybe don’t decide right now, I’m so sorry for whatever Rumlow did, or—or said—but let me at least get out of here before you—”

“Steve.” He sounded angrier than he’d meant to. “I’m not breaking up with you. We’ll be fine.”

Steve laughed. It was just relief. It was the closest to sounding like the Rumlow Sam remembered that he’d come yet.

Sam almost left the room right then. This was what he’d wanted—the symmetry, the other side of the equation to balance. He just couldn’t stand to be around it.

But Steve was balancing against the bars, tipped forward and holding himself stiff to stay in place, and if he left—if Sam left. And if something happened to Steve.

Rumlow had looked huge to Sam in the Triskelion, but trying to see him as Steve, now, he looked small; he was too short, his arms were too thin. Even where he wasn’t burned he looked fragile. What had looked chiseled on Rumlow looked brittle when Sam thought of him as Steve. He had to be three times the size Steve was before the serum, but Sam had never had to worry about Steve like that. Rumlow’s—Steve’s breath whistled through his damaged throat and Sam remembered asthma from the list of ailments Steve didn’t talk about.

He leaned against the wall opposite the cell. It was cold through his shirt. He ached up and down his spine, but he tried to look easy, to settle in.

Steve sagged against the bars a little. He wanted to ask, Sam could see that, eyes still moving too fast over Sam’s body and back to his face. He had to be bruised up, he realized suddenly. He hadn’t noticed any pain there in a while, but Rumlow had hit him in the face a couple times. The cut on his neck, there was that. Those, he thought, could be from any fight. He crossed his arms because the rings of bruises starting to bloom hot around his wrists, those didn’t look like any fight. He wasn’t sure whether Steve had seen them.

“They do room service here?” Sam said.

“Sam, don’t do it. Order us a pizza, I’m begging you.”

“Oh, Fury gives the Domino’s guys top-level clearance? S.H.I.E.L.D. really is a soft touch.”

“Well… make Bucky go get us some.”

“It’s not delivery, it’s…” Sam glanced down to make sure his wrists were hidden. He had blood under his fingernails. It was Steve’s, he realized, and it made his head spin. Steve’s body was in this building somewhere. Bucky should be there, with Rumlow, with that body, to make sure. Bucky would be the only one who could stop him, if he woke up and got loose; and Bucky would be going insane worrying about him, doctors prodding at what was still Steve’s body.

If Steve… if Rumlow woke up. If he got loose.

“I think I’ll do that,” Sam said. “We can all have a picnic.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said when Sam ducked outside and asked him. “Kind of wish I hadn’t,” Sam remembered too late, and he couldn’t meet Bucky’s eyes, between that and the thick chest-wide wash of shame at asking at all. Bucky knew. He knew why Sam didn’t want to be alone, not with Steve, not in case Rumlow woke up. He said, “Unless you want Natasha. One of us has to stay with Steve. Steve’s body. So if you want us to trade. But I can stay with you guys.”

Sam would, now he thought of it, have preferred Natasha. He knew her better and he trusted her to pretend she didn’t know even though she did.

And now he couldn’t say it, like he was scared of Bucky, like he needed it to be a woman in there with him.

“Nah, man, let’s have dinner,” he said. “And maybe—I’ll pay you back. Could you pick me up a shirt with longer sleeves? It’s fucking freezing in there.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said again, just as fast as the first time.

And it was okay. He couldn’t take his eyes off Steve the whole time and Bucky didn’t look at Steve once, but nothing happened. They managed to fake a normal conversation, too polite for how Sam and Bucky usually were together but pretty passable. He thought, I can keep this up. He’d make it through, Steve would make it through, they’d put him back in his body. They’d go—Right. Not home. They’d go somewhere, though. It’d be over.

A WILD UPDATE APPEARS!

UPDATE USES SOUL CRUSH

IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE

OH MY GOSH this is fantastic as ever, I love the way Sam is able to recognize Steve, his sad smile and his "big dumb panicked expression" (ahaha amazing). Sam trying to keep it together here is just heartbreaking. And last lines—"Right. Not home"—are perfect, because of course there's no erasing this and going back to the way things were, it's over but now they have to live with it.

Ngl I literally shrieked when I saw you had updated, it is SUCH a delight to have more of this story. <333 Thank you so much!

❤️🎉 thank you so MUUCH, I'm so delighted to have crushed!

PLEASE, shoot, I shrieked when I saw people are still reading after so much time LOL, lifesavers! Freaking out you still like it and enjoyed the Stevery and continued befuckedness of Sam/Steve ❤️❤️

Another hanger-on still enjoying the fuckery!

So. Fucking. Lovely.

Sweet! Which is a surprising this to say in this place. Really sweet and interesting.

Wow I had to walk away and flap my hands and rub my neck. Ugh this was so vivid! I love it! I watch a lot of horror movies and body horror can become mundane after a while but you did such a good job with this! Ugh gah that was so visceral!

[WHALE NOISES]

[MORE WHALE NOISES]

AND I AM THREE TIMES GLAD

[JK by "6b and 6c" I also mean "6d" because I've realized there's no chance in hell Sam Wilson doesn't confront Rumlow]

Sam got Steve back when they put him in his own body again.

Sam wasn’t there for it. He understood it was quite a light show. Natasha and Barnes took that bullet—after they took whatever bullets they’d needed to in order to come back smelling like smoke and chemicals, dragging a HYDRA scientist and a load of paperwork behind them. No one suggested that Sam go with them, or that he be there for the attempt to switch Steve and Rumlow back. Sam didn’t suggest it. He felt worse than useless but he kept his mouth shut.

“I don’t think we should try too many times,” Steve had said earlier, while Barnes and Natasha were gone. “You know what I mean? I don’t think we should give him too many chances to pull a fast one.”

Sam shivered. It really was cold in this cell. “Yeah, that did it,” he said. “I wasn’t feeling dire enough about this whole situation, but you got me there. Thanks.”

“Sam. I’m serious.”

Sam bent forward on the bench they’d hauled down for him. It had been a week since they got back from Mexico, and he didn’t really hurt anymore. The ache had eased, anyway. He didn’t constantly feel like he might have to throw up, just because that was the only thing he could think to do with the pain in his guts. Now he just felt… hollow. Scooped out. “Have you talked to anybody else about this?”

Steve shrugged and then froze up, shoulders locked, and they both had to wait out the rush of pain, wait for him to be able to talk.

This was what had Sam wanting to run away and throw up, now. That he was better, and Steve was trapped with this, with agony that barely let up. My sloppy seconds, he kept hearing.

“Not yet,” Steve said, breathless, but pretending he hadn’t just lost thirty seconds to burns that weren’t even his. “I wanted to tell you first. Then I’ll talk to Fury. I don’t think… I don’t think I’ll tell Nat or Bucky.”

“Good call,” Sam muttered, because they wouldn’t let it happen. Fury could order in a whole squadron of S.H.I.EL.D.’s finest to execute Steve Rogers’s body, and even if Fury did convince Natasha, Barnes alone could knock them down as they came. While Sam… “I get a vote here?”

“Come on, Sam… you don’t want him getting loose like this any more than I do. You know I can’t risk it.”

Sam shrugged. He could do that, repercussion-free. He got up and knocked on the door of the cell, one-two, one-two-three, which was the code that shot the extra dead bolts and locked him in here too, which in turn meant he could open the bars keeping Steve on his side of the cell. It had taken him a while to ask for this, and another while for Fury to agree. But everything else aside, Sam was a medic, and as much as he knew Steve needed advanced care way beyond his emergency field training, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he could fix things if he tried hard enough.

“If that happened,” he said, gesturing for Steve to get his shirt off. He aimed for casual, like he wasn’t picturing Steve—Steve’s actual body—with a bullet through the side of his head. “If you were stuck like this. Then what?”

Steve struggled with the range of motion required to get the collar over his head, but the shirt was loose and Sam knew better than to help. “That’s what I’m asking,” he said. “I guess the—worst case scenario, that part I’m telling. If he hurt you again, or somebody else… We can’t let that happen.”

Sam sucked a breath down, another coil of the haze around his brain shredding. Somebody else. If Natasha had walked into the house that day, before Sam got home—if it had been Wanda—Natasha wouldn’t have fallen for it, he thought. He could remember so many things he should’ve realized were wrong. This all would have been over in twenty-four hours if it had been Natasha. Hell, Wanda probably would have sensed it or some shit like that.

All of that was unhelpful and none of it changed the first second of his reaction; the image of Steve hurting them was already there, vivid in his head.

Steve fumbled his shirt and dropped it, but left it on the floor. He turned away from it like he didn’t care, like he could’ve picked it up if he wanted. “Right?”

Sam nodded and grabbed the sanitizer and jar of ointment off Steve’s bed.

“So what I’m asking is, then what?”

“Turn around, man.” Sam cleaned his hands off and dunked into the ointment, which smelled like the chemical-candy equivalent of mint and was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s in-house solution for burns that should have been life-ending and appeared not to have received any real medical attention since Rumlow had been broken out of the hospital. He smoothed it across the backs of Steve’s shoulders, where he couldn’t reach himself. The scars didn’t bother Sam in and of themselves—they were grisly, still red edged in white; they were thinner than they should be by now and sometimes they split; but he was used to worse and fresher than that. What bothered him was when he remembered they were Steve’s, for now; that Steve had to feel them. “Then,” Sam said, “you’re legally Brock Rumlow. Your face has been on TV as a ringleader in HYDRA, so that’s gonna put a crimp in our big date night when you get released.”

“Well.” Steve gasped when Sam touched something wrong, then went loose when he got it right. “Yeah. That’s a problem.”

“And this…” Sam dug his thumb into a knot. He was getting good at hitting the place between too hard for the burns, and too soft to do anything for the tension. “…is permanent. It’d cut into your avenging even if you were allowed within five hundred yards of a firearm.”

“Tony could make me a suit.” Steve turned to face him.

This was harder. He knew it was Steve. But this close, Steve the same height as him, brown-eyed and heavy-browed—Sam leaned back, hard as he tried not to.

Steve smiled a little, the worst kind. “Yeah, that,” he said. “It’s S.H.I.E.L.D., they’ll figure something out. Legally or otherwise. I know it’d be hard, I’m just saying I could handle it. I’m asking, could you?”

Sam was easily frustrated with Steve’s inability to let anything resembling a challenge go, irritation and concern always just below the surface waiting for that particular trait. It occurred to him why that might be when he found himself halfway through the only possible response, which was to kiss Steve.

It was weird. Steve was the wrong height. His mouth was shaped wrong. He kissed… right, clumsy and hungry and gentle where Rumlow had been desperate or overcautious. I should’ve noticed, Sam thought again. He worried for a second he’d freak out, given he was kissing Rumlow’s body. But it was fine. It was Steve.

And if it weren’t. If they switched back all of a sudden, right now. Rumlow couldn’t hurt anybody like this.

It felt like a betrayal, but something heavy moved in Sam’s chest, threatening to dislodge. “I’m game if you are,” he said.

Only that wasn’t what happened. Sam got Steve back. In his own body, hale and whole, no more pain, and Sam was glad—glad for Steve, and for the first few minutes, for them both. Barnes and Natasha swore it was him, and when Steve saw Sam he lit up the way only Steve could. He wrapped his arms around Sam and swung him up, and even that was fine, at first; it was Steve, Steve could do that, that was just how things were. For those first few seconds, Sam thought things were just going to click back to normal.

He got Steve back and they left together. They were boyfriends. They’d been living together. It was Steve, he’d been cleared, so they left together.

Before they left, Natasha pulled him aside. “We couldn’t gag him,” she said. “Rumlow. We needed them both talking, so we could be sure. We needed them in the same room for our shoestring version of this to work. Rumlow… talked.”

Sam stuck his tongue between his teeth and bit down, a little harder and a little harder again. He stopped. “I can guess what he said.”

“You can guess,” she agreed. “It was pretty predictable.”

To her. To Barnes, maybe. To Sam, now. It would have been fresh for Steve. Original material.

And then they left together, but they couldn’t go home, and neither of them wanted go through the rolodex of superheroes, so they went to a hotel.

Sam was still glad for Steve. He did click back to normal, as natural in his body as he’d been the whole time Sam had known him. After a few hours of rolling his shoulders a lot and taking deep breaths, it was like nothing had happened. Steve wasn’t the problem; Sam was. And the hotel.

It was a suite in a D.C. chain, not a tiny room in Mexico. But something about the smell of cleaner, the shiny comforter and the feel of industrial carpet underfoot… Either room was bigger than his bedroom at home, but they both felt small, like Sam was overheated and couldn’t get space to breathe.

He tried going in the bedroom and closing the door, with the excuse that he had to call the V.A. and figure some things out about his schedule. That was fine for as long as it lasted. Then he was done, and Steve knew he was done, because Steve could hear through that shitty excuse for a door; and Steve had been through some shit too, and Sam was going to get out there and be with his boyfriend.

He stared at the door instead, throat squeezing shut.

What was supposed to stop HYDRA from doing the same thing again? They’d had Rumlow before, but had they needed him with them physically in order to pull it off?

If they’d done it again, Rumlow would have had time to compose himself. By now, he’d be oriented, ready. He could pretend.

It was like being six years old and convinced there was a wolf at the head of the stairs, just where the light cut out, on the way up to bed. Sam did the same thing now he’d done then; open his eyes so wide it hurt and walk faster. He barreled into the couch-and-a-TV imitation living room.

Steve wiped his face clear, though not fast enough. He hadn’t been crying—Steve didn’t, really, only once in the time Sam had known him—but he was drawn and blotchy; it had been close. Sam washed over with relief, and then felt selfish, but it was so much easier to deal with Steve’s problems than with his.

And Rumlow wouldn’t have been crying, not even almost.

Sam sat down next to Steve on the couch and reached over to card his fingers through Steve’s hair. He still smelled funny, antiseptic from being kept locked up. “How’s it going?”

Steve’s face twisted up, smoothed out. He looked at the coffee table, so shiny it reflected them back. “He used to, um… Rumlow. Some of the jokes he made, when we worked together…” He smiled, a self-mocking grimace that reminded Sam of Barnes. “I really thought he didn’t like guys. I, uh. I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me that he’d—want—I was afraid he’d say awful stuff to you, or…” He pressed his palm over the fading bruise on Sam’s wrist without closing his fingers. “Bucky knew better, he tried to warn me. I didn’t get it.”

“Forget it,” Sam said. The rage started low in his gut, that he’d been this close to Steve not even hearing about it; if they’d just gagged Rumlow, Sam could have pretended it never happened. “I should have known, but I didn’t, so it wasn’t awful.”

He remembered, way too clearly, the way Rumlow had jerked away from him that first day. Startled, like waking up in Sam’s house hadn’t clued him in. If he hadn’t kissed Rumlow first, if he hadn’t fucking started it—

“Of course you didn’t know,” Steve said. “Why would you—who the hell thinks that?”

Sam kissed him, hard and sudden. He kept his eyes open. The kiss felt right, like Steve, but he looked… wrong, now. Fake. Steve’s eyes closed, eyelashes dark against his skin, like a picture. If Sam closed his eyes too it’d be fine.

He kept them open. He fumbled the button of Steve’s jeans.

“Um,” Steve pulled back to say. “Sam?”

“It’s over,” Sam said. “It could’ve been worse. Dude, think about it, if he’d actually done whatever HYDRA wanted instead of trying to elope. We were lucky. It wasn’t that bad, it was short, and it’s—it’s over.” He levered his hand into Steve’s pants, and Steve was hard in about the time it took Sam to get him in hand. Normally he’d stand up, because he hated losing an argument to his super-libido, but—weird day.

He leaned back. “Are you sure, is all,” he said.

Sam slid over him, into his lap, bracing himself with a hand on the back of the couch over Steve’s shoulder. It was green, an ugly bright shade with olive stripes. They should just go home, he thought, even though he knew they couldn’t. He bent forward, to lean into Steve, because that was what came naturally; and then he sat back so he could see Steve’s face.

Steve looked different. Not really, Sam knew, not actually. He just looked… newer. It had been years since Sam looked at him and saw Captain America, physical perfection, too good to be true. He saw Steve, his boyfriend, gentle hands and worst morning breath in the country, freckles and a lazy eyelid. Sam blinked hard, trying to banish the veneer of strangeness, dislocation. Like there was a robot there, something fake, not Rumlow but not… Steve, either.

Each time he blinked there was a second where everything was fine. When his eyes were closed he knew who it was. But that wasn’t good enough, that wasn’t going to get them anywhere.

Steve gasped, one of those hitching little ones that sounded like he might cry. He did that almost every time. Rumlow never had. He locked a hand on Sam’s hip.

Sam bit his tongue again, hard and harder. It wasn’t anything like before. Steve wasn’t holding him still. He worked his hand faster; he was getting hard too, thought he’d even like Steve to fuck him, maybe, except he didn’t think he could do this all the way through, keep it together.

When Steve came all over Sam’s hand and his jeans and the ugly couch Sam let himself close his eyes and lean into Steve’s shoulder, where he couldn’t see. Steve put an arm over his back, just one, and didn’t try to return the favor.

Sam knew better, he’d learned better, but right then, he thought, There. This isn’t going to be so tough.

[PAINED BUT EXCITED WHALE NOISES]

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Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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