Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

[trashmod]

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.

[Round 1] [Round 2] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained by greenkirtle)] [Round 3 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]

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

Comments

FILL: Let the Water Hold Me Down 3b/4

[(Anonymous)]

The blond man (not the blond man from his dreams) rocked back on his heels like he’d been slapped. “You’re not a sidekick,” he said with low-voiced sincerity.

Jim chuckled. “Not Captain America’s anyway.” His mystery customer’s face flashed with...hurt? Jim felt the first twinges of a headache. “If that’s what you’re looking for, though, you’re in luck, there’s been a lot of interest in Cap ever since the Battle of Manhattan. Even the wartime fictional stuff got reprinted.”

The customer looked baffled. Jim waited, and finally the man said, “What’s...what's your name?”

“Jim,” he said. “So, where are we looking?”

“Jim,” the man repeated. His brows were so furrowed he could have held a pencil between them. “I’m Steve.” He pulled a notebook and pen out of his pocket.

“Aha!” Jim said, and pointed a playful finger. His head hurt, but he could do Friendly Salesperson with worse than this. “I’m onto you, pal.” Steve looked up from his notebook, his eyes wide. “You’re into Captain America because you have the same name.”

“Um,” Steve said. “Something like that?” He wrote quickly.

Jim rubbed his good hand over his forehead. The headache was getting worse fast, and he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised; last week had been stressful and he knew he wasn’t over it yet. “OK, great, we can see what we, uh, have.”

His sentence lost momentum as Steve held out the notebook to him. In block letters that any teacher would have despaired of, Steve had written IS SOMEONE LISTENING?

Jim looked up and met Steve’s eyes. “I’m...I don’t understand what you’re asking,” he said, and suddenly his voice was shaking.

“I’m not here for books,” Steve said.

Jim had to swallow, digging his thumb into his temple as if that would make it stop hurting. “Well, books’re what we got, so.”

Steve stepped towards him, slowly enough that Jim didn’t startle, and put a careful hand on his forearm. “Jim. Bucky. It’s me. You knew me.” He paused and a pained smile curved his lips. “You know me, or at least I hope you do.”

Jim put out a hand blindly, groping for support. Steve was still talking, but he couldn’t make out the words. His head pounded like it was going to explode and the last time he’d had a headache this bad, he’d been looking up at fucking Zola, and his knees gave out and he crumpled, clutching at his head.

Steve crouched over him, hands on his shoulders, his voice low and urgent. “Bucky, Buck, what’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong.”

He shook his head as it filled with images, all the things he dreamed about; he clenched his teeth against the scream that wanted to break free. But there were other memories, and Steve was in some of them, Steve short and skinny and fragile, Steve suddenly tall and strong with a body that fit his soul, and he grasped for those moments in the flood.

He had no idea how long it had been when the pain started to recede, but Steve was still there, his hands warm and grounding. “Bucky?”

“Steve,” he said, and what the hell, he could be Bucky; he’d been Bucky longer than he’d ever been Jim. “Steve, how much of that really happened?” His voice cracked, but he forced the words out. “Tell me I didn’t hurt you.” Because he remembered now, remembered the roof, and the bridge, and the helicarrier. He remembered how angry he’d been. But someone who could make him forget, maybe they could make him remember wrong.

Steve’s lips made an unhappy line and Bucky’s heart sank. “You thought you had to, Buck,” he said with obvious reluctance. Because of course he wasn’t going to lie, he was a terrible liar.

“Oh God,” Bucky said. “If that’s real—”

“Anything you remember is probably real,” Steve said grimly.

“Pierce,” Bucky said, and he could hear the loathing in his own voice.

At that Steve smiled. It wasn’t a pretty smile. “Pierce is dead. Quicker than he deserved but at least the bastard’s paying for it now.”

Bucky closed his eyes. “What the hell year is it, Steve?”

Steve laughed, a quick startled laugh, and said, “2015. August, if you want to get—”

The bell over the door jingled merrily and Steph exclaimed, “What the hell is going on here?”

Re: FILL: Let the Water Hold Me Down 3b/4

[(Anonymous)]

i ADORE this so far!