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

bodyswap trash fill 6c/6

[(Anonymous)]

[alright never mind, I don't know exactly how many letters there are going to be in "part 6", because my word count has gotten away from me]

It didn’t feel like it at the time, but Sam got Steve back, at least a little more, when he went to see Rumlow.

It was a bad month, leading up to that; he made it a bad month. He really did know better. That was the killer. He knew better than to do every single thing he was doing. He was certified in knowing better. But he was right back to where he’d been after Riley died, doing the stupidest shit and promising himself this was the last time.

He knew better than to outright lie to Steve and say that every time he and Rumlow fucked he’d thought it was Steve. He knew better than to go through just a few motions, enough to pretend there wasn’t a problem but not enough to make himself feel normal. He knew better than to let something build up in his throat until it was too big ever to say out loud. He definitely knew better than to indulge his least convenient fear and turn his most stable relationship into an anvil on his chest. But Steve wanted to help, and Sam had lost his grip at a really inconvenient time.

They tried to jump right back in. They’d gone on separate missions—Sam with Natasha, Steve with Barnes—and Steve beat Sam back to their placeholder apartment.

Barnes was still there and Natasha walked in behind Sam, and those were maybe the only reasons Sam didn’t walk straight back out again. Steve was standing in the center of the shitty living room, shoulders hunched, tense and miserable, and he looked up sharply when Sam entered the room.

It wasn’t that Sam thought it was Rumlow again. It wasn’t, he told himself, because Barnes was right there, on the couch; he would have noticed the change. But there was that second of doubt, and then… then it was too late, like something had slipped sideways in his brain. He didn’t recognize Steve.

“Steve,” Natasha said, throwing him her coat. “Tea, thanks.”

“Natasha,” Steve said at almost the same time, relieved; “do you want something—” and then he caught on, and rolled his eyes, and hung up her coat for her even though she’d been closer to the coat rack to start with. Whatever it was in Sam’s head, it grated back the other way. Steve, sure, it was just Steve, all the same old tight-wound nerves and affection thrumming though him. Sam grabbed his shoulder, too late to fill the second where he’d stopped dead when he should have greeted his boyfriend, and followed him into the tiny kitchen.

Steve waited another awkward second to see if Sam would pull away before he went in for a kiss. “How’d it go?”

“I hate West Virginia. HYDRA can have it next time.”

Sam could see the way this face would twist up if it were Rumlow but it wasn’t, it was Steve, whose eyes crinkled when he laughed. Either way it was the same face, the same perfect face that had been over Sam when—

“Sam! They can’t. You know that Mothman fella needs it.”

“Oh, dude, don’t. Natasha made me go see a statue of that shady fucker.”

“I told you! I told you she would. Did you get a picture?”

“I got a picture of him frowning at Mothman,” Natasha said, swinging around the doorway. “Manners wouldn’t have cost you anything, Sam. Mothman never did anything to you.”

“Give you five bucks to make Sam hold that stuffed Jackalope, and get a picture of that too.” Steve darted too heavy a look at Sam while he said it—see, I remember stuff about Natasha, it’s me.

“Can we stop at aliens? I thought aliens were plenty. I don’t need you guys pulling for this other shit,” Sam said, and retreated to the kitchen table.

“You’re all crazy,” Barnes said, having followed Natasha over like a duckling. “Bigfoot, though…”

Steve muttered something about newfangled beasts and there being nothing wrong with a good lake monster, and turned to make the tea. It was good, it was normal, and it gave Sam whiplash how fast they lost it once Barnes and Natasha left. How fast he lost it.

He saw them out, and he turned around and Steve wasn’t there.

“Steve,” he said.

“Yeah?” He’d been right there, just in the bedroom. It hadn’t been a full ten seconds. It couldn’t be Rumlow again.

“Sorry. No, nothing. What’d you want to do for dinner, man?”

Steve shrugged. “Whatever you want. You look beat, I’ll go pick us something up?” He took a few steps forward, cautious, not even sneaky. It was Steve. It was. Sam wanted to tell him not to go, or to say he’d come too. It had to still be Steve, and if he lost sight of him for that long again it might not be.

“Sure,” he said. “That’d be great.”

He didn’t know whether that had been dumb or not, but he knew damn well that what he did after it was dumb. He knew better.

Because Steve got back, then, and it happened again, Sam had lost it. Pink lips, dark lashes, round chin on a square jaw, everything that made Steve, but it didn’t add up right. The kind of face strange women on the beach could trust, but only that. Not somebody Sam knew.

No Barnes, no Natasha. He’d had plenty of time to get himself together, if—if it wasn’t Steve. Sam gave up, starting by closing his eyes and grinding the heels of his palms into them when he couldn’t keep them shut.

He heard the takeout bags hit the floor of the shitty apartment, a little too hard, because Steve still did that—lost track of how tall he was now—and Steve’s footsteps, quick and light. Steve put both arms around him all at once, hard, the way he always had; it was only this month he’d started hesitating first.

“Ask me something,” Steve said.

“It’s fine.” Sam pushed his forehead against Steve’s shoulder.

“I gave Natasha a stuffed Jackalope,” Steve said anyway. “Tony called you Samwise once and now Vision thinks that might actually be your name. You passed up an invite to tour the world with Fury to help me track Bucky down. I’m gonna buy Bucky a stuffed Bigfoot if he’s not careful.”

“Like hell,” Sam said.

“Come on, it’d be funny.”

Sam considered. He leaned all the way in, let Steve actually hold him. “Do they have those ones that are shaped like bean bag chairs? That’d be funny. Make it the focal point of his living room.”

Steve laughed. It caught in his throat. “Sam,” he said. “I can’t—I can’t make you look at me like that. Can we… take some time off? If we just stay together, if you can see me, would that help?”

Sam knew better than this, exactly this, but he was sick of looking at Steve that way too. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s try that for a while.”

And that was where the month really took a nosedive.

Give it an inch. He knew that about himself, he remembered what it had been like after Riley. He’d retreated inside from the dizzy spells and ended up just short of outright agoraphobia. He just—he was just tired. He wanted a break, with Steve, without starting over every time one of them left the apartment.

Turned out, without starting over, they ground to a halt. The amount of time Sam could go without checking on Steve chopped itself into fractions, but he didn’t get any more comfortable around him. It was three weeks of standoffs, taking longer and longer runs in the morning and then sitting on opposite ends of the couch and pretending they were paying attention to the score of whatever game came up, or what had happened previously on…, or where David Attenborough was.

Nights were easier, in a weird way. Sam wasn’t getting much sleep and Steve was having nightmares, but that felt normal, like before, when they’d go through bad patches at the same time. Sam dozed on his side of the bed, and in his sleep Steve would stop being careful, roll into the middle and throw an arm and a leg over Sam. The apartment smelled weird, funky, but in bed it was their laundry soap and Steve’s sweat and candy-cinnamon toothpaste. By one or two in the morning, Steve started twitching in his sleep, breath getting deep and uneven.

Sam did what he’d always done, when this woke him up or he was awake for it anyway. He squirmed over to face Steve, slotted against him and wrapped both his arms around Steve’s waist. If Steve wasn’t holding him too tight, he levered himself up the bed a little and tuck Steve’s head under his chin. Steve didn’t feel so big like this—his waist was narrow, his arms weren’t so much bigger than Sam’s, he wasn’t that much taller. The shoulders and the extra couple inches made him look huge, but in the dark like this, he felt smaller.

Sam rubbed his knuckles up and down Steve’s back and whispered nonsense to try and get him faster to the part where he woke up.

Steve had these nightmares before, too. Not even the content had changed, although they happened more since Rumlow, and seemed worse. Steve would wake up shuddering, lips clamped shut, the hand between them running back and forth over the expanse of his own chest until he was sure.

“Nothing happened?” he asked this time, and it was always something like that. “Everyone’s okay?” or “We did it?”

Usually the nightmares came after they’d fucked up in the field; usually, not everyone was okay. “We’re both here,” Sam said this time.

Steve heaved a couple more breaths, tugging Sam closer convulsively. “Sorry,” he said blearily. His limbs were already going loose and heavy again.

“You’re okay.”

“I don’t think Bucky likes me this way either,” Steve said, with the unnerving clarity of someone talking in their sleep, and then he dropped out completely.

Sam held on tighter. He remembered—earlier that day Natasha had visited. Sam had gone out to get them all coffees, because he could leave and Steve wouldn’t be alone. He’d walked back faster and faster, thinking that Natasha might not be careful enough; maybe she’d step out too.

When he opened the door Steve was saying, “—easier for him if it hadn’t worked,” and then he saw Sam and the conversation shifted really damn fast.

Sam knew what he’d been talking about, now.

He’d had the same thought. That didn’t make it okay. If he could have scrubbed it out of his own head, he would; he didn’t want Steve thinking it, not ever, not for a second.

This wasn’t working, the break. Sam needed to change something; even if he couldn’t make it better, yet, he had to make it different. He told Steve they’d better go back to work—that he was going back to the VA, either way—and he told Fury he wanted to see Rumlow.

Re: bodyswap trash fill 6c/6

[(Anonymous)]

I love everything about this as usual. That Mothman fella needs it omg.

Re: bodyswap trash fill 6c/6

[(Anonymous)]

So like...every single line of this is an arrow to the fucking heart.

Steve put both arms around him all at once, hard, the way he always had; it was only this month he’d started hesitating first.
“Ask me something,” Steve said.
“It’s fine.” Sam pushed his forehead against Steve’s shoulder.
“I gave Natasha a stuffed Jackalope,” Steve said anyway.

The aftermath-of-trauma here is so gracefully executed, I can't bear it. (Yes I can.) You write with such gorgeous precision, I can't tell you how much I love it without the praise sounding clunky and inadequate. (I love it a lot, okay.) Thank you for another terrific update!