Without knowing how, he knows he could break the hold, knows he is stronger than the person on top of him; knows that doing so is forbidden and he’ll suffer for it if he tries. The hot weight on his back makes him sick. It’s almost worse than the pain.
“Not so bad now, are you?” the man snarls into his ear. “Zimniy Soldat’s not so scary when it’s begging for my cock.” He’s heard that voice before, though he can’t remember when; it’s more familiar than his own, with its constant stream of Please, harder, I need it, fuck me, please. He wishes he weren’t hard, wishes his body would stop responding to the hand that strokes him in time with the thrusts. He doesn’t want them to think he’s enjoying this. He’ll say what he’s been ordered to say, but more than anything he wants it to stop.
But pleasure builds, excruciatingly slowly under pain and fear, and another man has taken the first one’s place by the time he comes, helplessly, with a cry that wants to be a scream—
Jim’s eyes flew open in the dark. At the foot of the bed Tally made a questioning chirp and she got to her feet in a long, elaborate cat-stretch. She walked up his body and rammed her head into his chin, and he brought his right hand up to scratch her ears. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” It was probably silly to talk to the cat like she could understand him, but Jim didn’t care.
He turned his head to check the alarm clock across the room. 3:58, and he sighed. That was pretty good for a nightmare night, but he’d been hoping for a little more sleep. Tally, at least, would be delighted to get her breakfast early. “C’mon, cat,” Jim said. He wrapped his good arm around her so he could stand up and padded in the direction of the kitchen.
*
By his normal (at least, his aspirational) wake-up time Jim had shaken off the bad dream. It helped that he hadn’t actually gotten off to...well, it was rape, there wasn’t really any way around it, and Jim knew that what his dreaming mind gave him had very little to do with what he really wanted but he didn’t like it when one of the violent dreams made him shoot off in his sleep like a teenager. Those days it was hard to put on his Friendly Salesperson face.
For lack of anything better to do with his morning Jim went off to the bookstore an hour and a half early and got almost all his stocking done before he had to officially open the doors. His boss, a tiny woman named Stephanie, had hired him despite his lack of references and the fact that he had only one and a half functional arms. She had some kind of heart trouble that made it a bad idea for her to do her own heavy lifting, and his prosthetic, though not great at delicate work, was at least strong.
Jim peered out from the welter of paperback romances when the bell rang to discover Steph standing just inside the door, dripping. Her blond hair was plastered to her head; she looked like a wet cat—in more ways than one.
“Steph,” Jim said, trying to sound scolding, “what did I tell you about going out in the rain?”
“You said I’d catch my death,” Steph replied. “Which never happened when my grandmother said it either, so don’t try that on me, Buchanan.” She peeled herself out of her jacket as she spoke, not that it made much difference; everything she was wearing was soaked through. “There were a couple of teenagers tormenting a dog. I didn’t want to have to keep track of my umbrella.”
Jim sighed and abandoned the romances. “Did you run ‘em off?”
“I gave them the big sister voice and they cheesed it,” Steph said with grim satisfaction. “The dog ran too so it can’t have been too bad off.”
“You know gettin’ yourself all worked up isn’t good for your heart,” Jim said over his shoulder as he went to the tiny office-slash-breakroom. Steph kept an eclectic assortment of gear back there for exactly this kind of occasion, including a couple of large towels. Jim snagged one.
“I survived for twenty-six years without you,” Steph said loftily when he came back out. “I don’t need you to remind me what’s bad for my heart.”
“But if you died I’d be out of a job,” Jim said, and dropped the towel on her head, rubbing it into her hair despite her outraged squawk. “Next time call me, I’ll come and glare at ‘em.”
Steph fended him off enough to take over the drying herself. “You do give great glare,” she said thoughtfully.
*
Jim went out to pick up lunch, turning up his collar against the last of the drizzle. When he got back he and Steph went to the back room, leaving the door open so they’d hear any arrivals.
Halfway through his sandwich Jim said absently, “Hey, have you ever heard the phrase <Winter Soldier>?”
Steph looked up at him, her brow furrowing. “Zim...what? What language is that?”
Jim frowned and thought about what he’d said. “Uh, sorry. Zimniy Soldat. It means ‘Winter Soldier’. It’s, uh, Russian.” He didn’t let his voice rise in question.
“There was an inquiry into the Mai Lai massacre called the Winter Soldier Investigation,” Steph said slowly. “They got the name from the Thomas Paine quote, I think. These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” She put a spoonful of her chili into her mouth. Jim liked to see her eating well, and it was adorable that she just had that quote memorized. “I didn’t know you spoke Russian.”
Jim gave her a sideways smile and said, “Neither did I.”
“We’ll have to test you, see how much you know,” Steph said. She seemed a little unsettled, and Jim couldn’t blame her; the reason he had no references was because he didn’t remember much of anything past a few days before he’d come into her store, looking for a job to fill his time with. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to know about your employee—or your friend. But he had a bank account (he didn’t need the job for the money) and a Social Security card and a driver’s license, and no outstanding warrants for his arrest, so he figured it couldn’t be too bad.
*
He spent the evening watching movies with Tally curled on his chest. She hadn’t liked him for the first few days he could remember; he thought perhaps he’d acted different—maybe even smelled different, if something traumatic had happened to alter his memory. “One bonus of this amnesia thing,” he told the cat. “I get to see all the movies for the first time again.” When The Princess Bride was over, Jim tapped his fingers on his laptop’s keys for a few seconds and then went to Wikipedia.
The disambiguation page listed two “American war crimes investigations,” a 1972 movie about the earlier one, a play from 1943...and a conspiracy theory. He clicked it.
The Winter Soldier is an urban legend of the intelligence community, said to have been responsible for at least two dozen assassinations, beginning in 1961 and extending to the present day.
Jim skimmed down the page, trying to put together the most important points. The ‘Winter Soldier’ was accused of—or credited with—killing every important person to die violently in the latter half of the Twentieth Century, from Howard Stark through an assortment of generals and diplomats to JFK. The list of possibilities was a lot longer than two dozen, though most of them were marked tentative with asterisks. There were two pictures, neither one more than a roughly man-shaped blur from a distance; in one it was possible to make out a light-colored sleeve with a splotch on the shoulder, but there was nothing you could hope to recognize the subject from.
The Winter Soldier is rumored(by whom?) to have been involved in the Insight Crash. Multiple eyewitness accounts[1][2][3] place him in Washington D.C. during the several days before Captain America/Steve Rogers’ release of sensitive SHIELD data to the Internet.
“Weird,” Jim said aloud, and went to bed.
*
He’s on his knees and has been for a long time. His left arm hangs heavy and useless at his side, deactivated. There’s a hand petting through his hair; he is not allowed to press into it. “You’d stay here just like this forever if I told you to, wouldn’t you?”
He doesn’t nod, doesn’t move; if he moves he’ll be punished. Worse, he will have disobeyed. He doesn’t want to disappoint this man, who is blond and beautiful and cares for him. He will not move, he will make no sound. Tears trickle from his eyes but that’s an involuntary reaction and he won’t be punished for it.
“Good,” the blond man says. “Open your mouth.”
He does, grateful; if he’s going to be used now, it’s almost over. He knows he can take it for a little longer and then he’ll be released and he will not have been disobedient—
FILL: Let the Water Hold Me Down 1/4
Without knowing how, he knows he could break the hold, knows he is stronger than the person on top of him; knows that doing so is forbidden and he’ll suffer for it if he tries. The hot weight on his back makes him sick. It’s almost worse than the pain.
“Not so bad now, are you?” the man snarls into his ear. “Zimniy Soldat’s not so scary when it’s begging for my cock.” He’s heard that voice before, though he can’t remember when; it’s more familiar than his own, with its constant stream of Please, harder, I need it, fuck me, please. He wishes he weren’t hard, wishes his body would stop responding to the hand that strokes him in time with the thrusts. He doesn’t want them to think he’s enjoying this. He’ll say what he’s been ordered to say, but more than anything he wants it to stop.
But pleasure builds, excruciatingly slowly under pain and fear, and another man has taken the first one’s place by the time he comes, helplessly, with a cry that wants to be a scream—
Jim’s eyes flew open in the dark. At the foot of the bed Tally made a questioning chirp and she got to her feet in a long, elaborate cat-stretch. She walked up his body and rammed her head into his chin, and he brought his right hand up to scratch her ears. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” It was probably silly to talk to the cat like she could understand him, but Jim didn’t care.
He turned his head to check the alarm clock across the room. 3:58, and he sighed. That was pretty good for a nightmare night, but he’d been hoping for a little more sleep. Tally, at least, would be delighted to get her breakfast early. “C’mon, cat,” Jim said. He wrapped his good arm around her so he could stand up and padded in the direction of the kitchen.
*
By his normal (at least, his aspirational) wake-up time Jim had shaken off the bad dream. It helped that he hadn’t actually gotten off to...well, it was rape, there wasn’t really any way around it, and Jim knew that what his dreaming mind gave him had very little to do with what he really wanted but he didn’t like it when one of the violent dreams made him shoot off in his sleep like a teenager. Those days it was hard to put on his Friendly Salesperson face.
For lack of anything better to do with his morning Jim went off to the bookstore an hour and a half early and got almost all his stocking done before he had to officially open the doors. His boss, a tiny woman named Stephanie, had hired him despite his lack of references and the fact that he had only one and a half functional arms. She had some kind of heart trouble that made it a bad idea for her to do her own heavy lifting, and his prosthetic, though not great at delicate work, was at least strong.
Jim peered out from the welter of paperback romances when the bell rang to discover Steph standing just inside the door, dripping. Her blond hair was plastered to her head; she looked like a wet cat—in more ways than one.
“Steph,” Jim said, trying to sound scolding, “what did I tell you about going out in the rain?”
“You said I’d catch my death,” Steph replied. “Which never happened when my grandmother said it either, so don’t try that on me, Buchanan.” She peeled herself out of her jacket as she spoke, not that it made much difference; everything she was wearing was soaked through. “There were a couple of teenagers tormenting a dog. I didn’t want to have to keep track of my umbrella.”
Jim sighed and abandoned the romances. “Did you run ‘em off?”
“I gave them the big sister voice and they cheesed it,” Steph said with grim satisfaction. “The dog ran too so it can’t have been too bad off.”
“You know gettin’ yourself all worked up isn’t good for your heart,” Jim said over his shoulder as he went to the tiny office-slash-breakroom. Steph kept an eclectic assortment of gear back there for exactly this kind of occasion, including a couple of large towels. Jim snagged one.
“I survived for twenty-six years without you,” Steph said loftily when he came back out. “I don’t need you to remind me what’s bad for my heart.”
“But if you died I’d be out of a job,” Jim said, and dropped the towel on her head, rubbing it into her hair despite her outraged squawk. “Next time call me, I’ll come and glare at ‘em.”
Steph fended him off enough to take over the drying herself. “You do give great glare,” she said thoughtfully.
*
Jim went out to pick up lunch, turning up his collar against the last of the drizzle. When he got back he and Steph went to the back room, leaving the door open so they’d hear any arrivals.
Halfway through his sandwich Jim said absently, “Hey, have you ever heard the phrase <Winter Soldier>?”
Steph looked up at him, her brow furrowing. “Zim...what? What language is that?”
Jim frowned and thought about what he’d said. “Uh, sorry. Zimniy Soldat. It means ‘Winter Soldier’. It’s, uh, Russian.” He didn’t let his voice rise in question.
“There was an inquiry into the Mai Lai massacre called the Winter Soldier Investigation,” Steph said slowly. “They got the name from the Thomas Paine quote, I think. These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” She put a spoonful of her chili into her mouth. Jim liked to see her eating well, and it was adorable that she just had that quote memorized. “I didn’t know you spoke Russian.”
Jim gave her a sideways smile and said, “Neither did I.”
“We’ll have to test you, see how much you know,” Steph said. She seemed a little unsettled, and Jim couldn’t blame her; the reason he had no references was because he didn’t remember much of anything past a few days before he’d come into her store, looking for a job to fill his time with. It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to know about your employee—or your friend. But he had a bank account (he didn’t need the job for the money) and a Social Security card and a driver’s license, and no outstanding warrants for his arrest, so he figured it couldn’t be too bad.
*
He spent the evening watching movies with Tally curled on his chest. She hadn’t liked him for the first few days he could remember; he thought perhaps he’d acted different—maybe even smelled different, if something traumatic had happened to alter his memory. “One bonus of this amnesia thing,” he told the cat. “I get to see all the movies for the first time again.” When The Princess Bride was over, Jim tapped his fingers on his laptop’s keys for a few seconds and then went to Wikipedia.
The disambiguation page listed two “American war crimes investigations,” a 1972 movie about the earlier one, a play from 1943...and a conspiracy theory. He clicked it.
The Winter Soldier is an urban legend of the intelligence community, said to have been responsible for at least two dozen assassinations, beginning in 1961 and extending to the present day.
Jim skimmed down the page, trying to put together the most important points. The ‘Winter Soldier’ was accused of—or credited with—killing every important person to die violently in the latter half of the Twentieth Century, from Howard Stark through an assortment of generals and diplomats to JFK. The list of possibilities was a lot longer than two dozen, though most of them were marked tentative with asterisks. There were two pictures, neither one more than a roughly man-shaped blur from a distance; in one it was possible to make out a light-colored sleeve with a splotch on the shoulder, but there was nothing you could hope to recognize the subject from.
The Winter Soldier is rumored(by whom?) to have been involved in the Insight Crash. Multiple eyewitness accounts[1][2][3] place him in Washington D.C. during the several days before Captain America/Steve Rogers’ release of sensitive SHIELD data to the Internet.
“Weird,” Jim said aloud, and went to bed.
*
He’s on his knees and has been for a long time. His left arm hangs heavy and useless at his side, deactivated. There’s a hand petting through his hair; he is not allowed to press into it. “You’d stay here just like this forever if I told you to, wouldn’t you?”
He doesn’t nod, doesn’t move; if he moves he’ll be punished. Worse, he will have disobeyed. He doesn’t want to disappoint this man, who is blond and beautiful and cares for him. He will not move, he will make no sound. Tears trickle from his eyes but that’s an involuntary reaction and he won’t be punished for it.
“Good,” the blond man says. “Open your mouth.”
He does, grateful; if he’s going to be used now, it’s almost over. He knows he can take it for a little longer and then he’ll be released and he will not have been disobedient—
Jim’s eyes flew open in the dark.